Using the introduction of high-speed rail as exogenous shocks to costs of information acquisition, we show that reductions in information-acquisition costs lead to a significant increase in information production and improvement in output quality, evidenced by higher frequency of analysts...

Using the introduction of high-speed rail (HSR) as an exogenous shock to costs of information acquisition, we show that reductions in information-acquisition costs lead to (i) a significant increase in information production, evidenced by a higher frequency of analysts visiting portfolio firms,...

We examine whether the relationship between managerial risk-taking incentives and bank risk is sensitive to the underlying macroeconomic conditions. We find that risk-taking incentives provided to bank executives are associated with higher bank riskiness during economic downturns. We attribute...

I model a financial market that dries out in the wake of premature liquidations. Two main results are obtained. First, liquidity may vanish even if small, riskneutral buyers could easily compensate the ongoing selling. Thus, more markets are vulnerable to quot;runsquot; than suggested by...

How much of entrepreneurial performance is sheer luck compared to talent, experience, education, and hard work? We define luck as unexpected performance and look for an answer in a large survey of entrepreneurs. Accordingly, luck ranks last in importance among various success factors and...

According to our survey about climate risk perceptions, institutional investors believe climate risks have financial implications for their portfolio firms and that these risks, particularly regulatory risks, already have begun to materialize. Many of the investors, especially the long-term,...

We investigate whether corporate finance incentives affect the extent of corporate hedging with property insurance. Using a database that contains detailed insurance information, we show that firms buy property insurance to reduce the expected costs of distress. Further, we document a scale...

Economic theories provide conflicting hypotheses on how wealth inequality affects entrepreneurial dynamism. To empirically investigate its impact, we construct local measures of household wealth inequality based on financial rents, home equity, and 1880 farmland. We identify its effects on...

We describe a general equilibrium model with a banking system in which the deposit bank collects deposits from households and the merchant bank provides funds to firms. Merchant banks borrow collateralized short-term funds from deposit banks. In a financial downturn, as the value of collateral...