Irrigation in the Eastern US receives little attention compared to the West, but farmers in humid states of the US, traditionally reliant on rainfall, have more than tripled irrigation since 1978. We examine this trend in Illinois where there has been a nearly threefold increase in center pivot...

Recent supply disruptions catapulted the issue of risk in global supply chains (GSCs) to the top of policy agendas and created the impression that shortages would have been less severe if GSCs were either shorter and more domestic, or more diversified. But is this right? We start our answer by...

Using textual analysis of earnings conference calls, we quantify firms' supply chain risk and its sources. Our proxy for supply chain risk exhibits large cross-sectional and time-series variation that aligns with reasonable priors and is unprecedently high during the Covid-19 pandemic. In...

We characterize what features make supply chains more resilient. Using new data on the universe of firm-to-firm transactions from an Indian state, we identify firms with larger supplier risk following the Covid-19 lockdowns. Using an event-study design we find firms with suppliers in...

This paper studies how firm failures and the resulting disruptions to supply chains can amplify negative shocks. We develop a non-competitive model where customized supplier-customer relations increase productivity, and the relationship-specific surplus generated between firms and their...

Representation of women and minorities in a "selectorate"--the group that chooses an organization's leaders--is a key mechanism for promoting diversity. We show that representation, on its own, is not sufficient for selecting gender diversity: a supportive organizational culture is also...

Corporate culture is an omnibus term that includes many elements like norms, values, knowledge, and customs that are relevant to a firm. Economists have made great progress recently in devising methods of measuring different aspects of corporate culture. These empirical measures of culture have...

Social progress through improved treatment of minority groups (the embrace of anti-racist and anti-sexist norms, for example) may or may not spread to corporate cultures through competition. Sometimes the market fails to adapt on its own and government must pass legislation to secure changes in...

Politicians and regulators rely on feedback from the public when setting policies. For-profit corporations and non-pro t entities are active in this process and are arguably expected to provide independent viewpoints. Policymakers (and the public at large), however, may be unaware of the...

Markets and firms offer contrasting methods to arrange production. In markets, contracts govern the purchase of parts and services that compose production. In firms, the shared values, customs, and norms coming from a corporate culture govern employees' joint development of those parts and...