Corporate transparency reduces information asymmetries between firms and capital markets, but increases the costs associated with information leakage to competitors. We explore how a country's information environment affects innovation, an activity characterized by high information asymmetries...

Higher taxes on corporate payouts increase the cost of financing with stock issues. As a result, real activities that depend on equity financing should be particularly sensitive to payout taxation. For example, firms rely extensively on stock issues to fund R&D spending, making R&D a potentially...

The high-tech sector accounts for the majority of corporate innovation in modern economies. In a sample of 38 countries, we document a strong positive relation between the initial size of the country's high-tech sector and subsequent rates of GDP and total factor productivity growth. We also...

Higher country taxes on noxious manufacturing emissions lead to substantial increases in firm R&D spending. The R&D response is driven entirely by the high-pollution firms most affected by emissions taxes. Pollution taxes increase the market value of R&D spending in polluting firms, even when...

The economic disruption from the COVID-19 pandemic prompted governments around the world to initiate an unprecedented number of temporary lending and tax deferment programs. Which firms will benefit from these programs? What are the implications for firm balance sheets and post-crisis survival?...

An important literature emphasizes that finance grew rapidly after WWII relative to the full economy and the services sector, but these are poor benchmarks because they mask a broad structural shift from low- to high-skill services. We show that: i) finance is among the most skill-intensive...