School systems regularly use student assessments for accountability purposes. But, as highlighted by our conceptual model, different configurations of assessment usage generate performance-conducive incentives of different strengths for different stakeholders in different school environments. We...

We investigate whether stock markets efficiently price risks brought on or exacerbated by climate change. We focus on drought, the most damaging natural disaster for crops and food-company cash flows. We show that prolonged drought in a country, measured by the Palmer Drought Severity Index...

This paper is an investigation into the determinants of asymmetries in stock returns. We develop a series of cross-sectional regression specifications which attempt to forecast skewness in the daily returns of individual stocks. Negative skewness is most pronounced in stocks that have...

We estimate a model of damage to corporate earnings from COVID-19. An unexpected pandemic lowers current earnings due to costly mitigation and reduces growth rates. Damage depends on the expected arrival of a vaccine that reverts earnings to normal. Using this model, we infer from analysts'...

Economic development in Latin America has trailed most other world regions over the past four decades despite its relatively high initial development and school attainment levels. This puzzle can be resolved by considering the actual learning as expressed in tests of cognitive skills, on which...

Theory suggests that, in the presence of local bias, the price of a stock should be decreasing in the ratio of the aggregate book value of firms in its region to the aggregate risk tolerance of investors in its region. We test this proposition using data on U.S. Census regions and states, and...

We investigate the idea that stock-market participation is influenced by social interaction. We build a simple model in which any given 'social' investor finds it more attractive to invest in the market when the participation rate among his peers is higher. The model predicts higher...

We develop a model of stock prices in which there are both differences of opinion among investors as well as short-sales constraints. The key insight that emerges is that breadth of ownership is a valuation indicator. When breadth is low i.e., when few investors have long positions in the stock...

Measuring the value of labor-market hires for stock prices, be it underwriters when firms go public (IPOs) or chief executive officers (CEOs), is difficult due to selection. Opaque firms with higher costs of capital benefit more from prestigious underwriters, while productive firms benefit more...

Expanded international data from the PIAAC survey of adult skills allow us to analyze potential sources of the cross-country variation of comparably estimated labor-market returns to skills in a more diverse set of 32 countries. Returns to skills are systematically larger in countries that have...