A growing theoretical and empirical literature shows that public recognition can lead employees to exert greater effort. However, status competition is also associated with excessive expenditure on status goods, greater likelihood of bankruptcy, and more risk taking by money managers. This paper...

We measure the effects of chain economies, business stealing, and heterogeneous firms' comparative advantages in the discount retail industry. Traditional entry models are ill-suited for this high-dimensional problem of strategic interaction. Building upon recently developed profit inequality...

This paper identifies how bank branching benefited local economies during the Great Depression. Using archival data and narrative evidence, I show how Bank of America's branch network in 1930s California created an internal capital market to diversify away local liquidity shortfalls, allowing it...

We study the spatial expansion of banks in response to banking deregulation in the 1980s and 90s. During this period, large banks expanded rapidly, mostly by adding new branches in new locations, while many small banks exited. We document that large banks sorted into the densest markets, but...

This paper utilizes a unique dataset collected through site visits to extend the analysis of the relationship between the human resource management environment and establishment performance to the service sector, specifically the branch operations of a large bank. Case studies of several...

We estimate the effects of Wal-Mart stores on county-level retail employment and earnings, accounting for endogeneity of the location and timing of Wal-Mart openings that most likely biases the evidence against finding adverse effects of Wal-Mart stores. We address the endogeneity problem using...

We develop a heterogeneous-agent model with local spatial markets to study the relationships among bank expansion, growth, and inequality. In the model, households choose their occupations, consumption, and holdings of loans and portfolio assets that vary by liquidity. Banks choose the locations...

Studies have shown a connection between finance and growth, but most do not consider how financial and real factors interact to put a virtuous cycle of economic development into motion. As the main transportation advance of the 19th century, railroads connected established commercial centers and...

Using exogenous deposit windfalls from oil and natural gas shale discoveries, we demonstrate that bank branch networks help integrate U.S. lending markets. We find that banks exposed to shale booms increase their mortgage lending in non-boom counties by 0.93% per 1% increase in deposits. This...

Bank branch density, defined as the number of bank branches to total deposits, has significantly declined over the past decade, fueled by a confluence of branch closings and the almost doubling of deposits between 2016 and 2022. During this period, banks with low branch density benefited from...