Private pension provision faces the challenging task of providing stable income streams during retirement. The challenge has increased markedly in the last decades due to volatile financial markets, falling interest rates and the withdrawal of employers and external insurers as risk bearers of...

We develop a dynamic model of investment, cash holdings, financing, and risk management policies in which firms face financing frictions and are subject to permanent and temporary cash flow shocks. In this model, target cash holdings depend on the long-term prospects of the firm, implying that...

This paper investigates the importance of accessing public capital markets through an initial public offering (IPO), and the consequent relaxation of firms’ financial constraints, for firm-level long term employment decisions. We find that firms significantly increase post-IPO investment in...

This paper studies how U.S. monetary policy affects global stock prices. We find that global stock prices respond strongly to changes in U.S. interest rate policy, with stock prices increasing (decreasing) following unexpected monetary loosening (tightening). This impact is more pronounced for...

Financial constraints are fundamental to empirical research in finance and economics. We propose two novel tests to evaluate how well measures of financial constraints actually capture constraints. We find that firms classified as constrained according to five popular measures do not in fact...

This paper examines the relationship between innovation and firms' dependence on external capital by analyzing the innovation activities of privately-held and publicly-traded firms We find that public firms in external finance dependent industries generate patents of higher quantity, quality,...

This Paper examines how the investment of financially constrained firms varies with their level of internal funds. We develop a theoretical model of optimal investment under financial constraints. Our model endogenizes the costs of external funds and allows for negative levels of internal funds....

We analyze exclusive contracts between health care providers and insurers in a model where some consumers choose to stay uninsured. In case of a monopoly insurer, exclusion of a provider changes the distribution of consumers who choose not to insure. Although the foreclosed care provider remains...

This Paper first documents the evolution of the cross-sectional income and consumption distribution in the US in the past 25 years. Using data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey we find that a rising income inequality has not been accompanied by a corresponding rise in consumption inequality....

The GM and Ford downgrade to junk status during May 2005 caused a wide-spread sell-off in their corporate bonds. Using a novel dataset, we document that this sell-off appears to have generated significant liquidity risk for market-makers, as evidenced in the significant imbalance in their quotes...