How do firms mitigate the impact of rising temperatures on employment? Using establishment-level data, we show that firms operating in multiple counties in the United States respond to heat shocks by reducing employment in the affected locations and increasing it in unaffected locations, whereas...

Existing evidence shows convincingly that expected cash flows of non-financial firms can be negatively affected by their total risk, so that non-financial firms can create shareholder wealth by managing their total risk. After reviewing theories that demonstrate links between firm value and...

We survey the microeconomics literature that studies how firms in the developing world are adapting to extreme weather, local pollution, and natural disasters. Climate change increases the uncertainty that every firm must address as it decides where and how to produce and who to trade with. We...

Beyond its immediate impact on public health and the economy, the COVID-19 pandemic has put democracy under stress. While a common view is that people should blame the government rather than the political system for bad crisis management, an opposing view is that dissatisfaction with government...

World War II was one of the most acute emergencies in U.S. history, and the first where the mobilization of science and technology was a major part of the government response. The U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) led a major research effort to develop technologies and...

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the financial and legal system will need to deal with a surge of financial distress in the business sector. Some firms will be able to survive, while others will face bankruptcy and thus need to be liquidated or reorganized. Many surviving firms will need to...

The paper elicits a mechanism by which private leverage choices exhibit strategic complementarities through the reaction of monetary policy. When everyone engages in maturity transformation, authorities have little choice but facilitating refinancing. In turn, refusing to adopt a risky balance...

Different economies at different times use different institutional arrangements to constrain the people entrusted with allocating the economy's capital and other resources. Comparative financial histories show these corporate governance regimes to be largely stable through time, but capable of...