Can microcredit help unlock a poverty trap for some people by putting their businesses on a different trajectory? Could the small microcredit treatment effects often found for the average household mask important heterogeneity? In Hyderabad, India, we find that "gung ho entrepreneurs" (GEs),...

Managerial delegation is essential for firm growth. While firms in poor countries often shun outside managers and instead recruit among family members, the pattern is quite the opposite for firms in rich countries. In this paper, we ask whether these differences in managerial delegation have...

We quantify the link between the timing of state-level implementations of political reservations for women in India with the role of women in India's manufacturing sector. While overall employment of women in manufacturing does not increase after the reforms, we find significant evidence that...

We consider the short-run responses of businesses and their owners to the introduction of Section 199A, a deduction implemented in 2018 that reduced the effective tax rate on pass-through business income. We study the deduction using several datasets derived from de-identified tax records of...

We survey 861 finance academics, professionals, and public sector regulators and policy economists about climate finance topics. They identify regulatory risk as the top climate risk to businesses and investors over the next five years, but they view physical risks as the top risk over the next...

Using surveys of firms around the world, we review existing evidence on how firms form their macroeconomic expectations. Several facts stand out. First, the mean inflation forecasts of firms often deviate significantly from those of professional forecasters and households. Second, disagreement...

In this paper we explore whether or not the experience as a founder of a venture capital-backed startup influences the performance of founders who become venture capitalists (VCs). We find that nearly 7% of VCs were previously founders of a venture-backed startup. Having a successful exit and...

We analyze a field experiment conducted on AngelList Talent, a large online search platform for startup jobs. In the experiment, AngelList randomly informed job seekers of whether a startup was funded by a top-tier investor and/or was funded recently. We find that the same startup receives...

In a model with cheap talk, employers can send messages about their willingness to pay for higher ability workers, which job-seekers can use to direct their search and tailor their wage bid. Introducing such messages leads--under certain conditions--to an informative separating equilibrium which...

The United States is one of the few countries that does not guarantee paid family leave (PFL) to workers. Proposals for PFL legislation are often met with opposition from employer organizations, who fear disruptions to business, especially among small employers. But there has been limited data...