Open source methods for creating software rely on developers who voluntarily reveal code in the expectation that other developers will reciprocate. Open source incentives are distinct from earlier uses of intellectual property, leading to different types of inefficiencies and different biases in...

This paper examines whether CEOs are fired after bad firm performance caused by factors beyond their control. Standard economic theory predicts that corporate boards filter out exogenous industry and market shocks to firm performance when deciding on CEO retention. Using a new hand-collected...

While there is strong evidence for productivity-driven selection into exporting, the empirical literature has struggled to identify export-related efficiency gains within plants. Previous research typically derived revenue productivity (TFPR), which is downward biased if more efficient producers...

By reducing the threat of a hostile takeover, business combination (BC) laws weaken corporate governance and increase the opportunity for managerial slack. Consistent with the notion that competition mitigates managerial slack, we find that while firms in non-competitive industries experience a...

We examine whether hot hands exist among hedge fund managers. In measuring performance persistence, we use hedge fund style benchmarks. This allows us to identify managers with valuable skills, and also to control for option-like features inherent in returns from hedge fund strategies. We take...

For the first four decades of its existence the U.S. nuclear power industry was run by regulated utilities, with most companies owning only one or two reactors. Beginning in the late 1990s electricity markets in many states were deregulated and almost half of the nation's 103 reactors were sold...

This study documents a strong inverse relationship between accident rates and production in a sample of eleven firms in the same narrowly defined industry classification. Given the detailed set of input controls and controls for plant-specific and time-specific factors used in the analysis, the...

In this paper we disentangle the sources of public sector inefficiency using 1982-1995 panel data on manufacturing firms in Indonesia. We consider two leading hypotheses: (1) public sector enterprises are inefficient due to monitoring problems and (2) public sector enterprises are inefficient...