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,...

Donald Trump's election and his nomination of Scott Pruitt, a climate skeptic, to lead the Environmental Protection Agency drastically downshifted expectations on US climate-change policy. We study firms' stock-price reactions and institutional investors' portfolio adjustments after these...

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...

Given ambiguity concerning the effects of disclosure on firm value and markets, we examine the question of whether investors value carbon risk disclosure. Through a survey and empirical tests, we conclude that many institutional investors consider climate risk reporting to be as important as...

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 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...

In this paper, I estimate the effect of mandatory greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions disclosure on corporate value. Using the introduction of mandatory GHG emissions reporting for firms listed on the Main Market of the London Stock Exchange as a source of exogenous variation, I find that firms most...