We examine CEO-board dynamics using a new panel dataset that spans 1920 to 2011. The long sample allows us to perform within-firm and within-CEO tests over a long horizon, many for the first time in the governance literature. Consistent with theories of bargaining or dynamic contracting, we find...

We use detailed assessments of CEO personalities to explore the option-based measure of CEO overconfidence, Longholder, introduced by Malmendier and Tate (2005a) and widely used in the behavioral corporate finance and economics literatures. Longholder is significantly related to several specific...

Firms spend substantial resources on marketing and selling. Interpreting this as evidence of frictions in product markets, which require firms to spend resources on customer acquisition, this paper develops a search theoretic model of firm dynamics in frictional product markets. Introducing...

I study the allocation of human capital in an economy with production externalities, financial constraints and career choices. Agents choose to become entrepreneurs, workers or financiers. Entrepreneurship has positive externalities, but innovators face borrowing constraints and require the...

Since reaching a peak in 1997, the number of listed firms in the U.S. has fallen in every year but one. During this same period, public firms have been net purchasers of $3.6 trillion of equity (in 2015 dollars) rather than net issuers. The propensity to be listed is lower across all firm size...

We consider a dynamic economy populated by heterogeneous firms subject to generic capital frictions: adjustment costs, taxes and financing constraints. A random subset of firms in this economy receives an empirical "treatment", which modifies the parameters governing these frictions. An...