This paper examines the impact of labor unemployment risk on corporatefinancing decisions. Theory suggests that firms choose conservativefinancial policies partly as a means of mitigating worker exposure tounemployment risk. Using changes in state unemployment insurance benefitlaws as a source...

This paper examines whether debt financing can undermine a supermarket firm's incentive to provide product quality. In the supermarket industry, product availability is an important measure of a retailer's quality. Using U.S. consumer price index microdata to track inventory shortfalls, I find...

This paper analyzes corporate responses to the liability risk arising from its workers' exposure to newly identified carcinogens. We find that firms, especially those with weak balance sheets, tend to respond to such risks by acquiring large, unrelated businesses with relatively high operating...

I analyze the strategic use of debt financing to improve a firm's bargaining position with an important supplier -- organized labor. Because maintaining high levels of corporate liquidity can encourage workers to raise their wage demands, a firm with external finance constraints has an incentive...

The authors find that privately held firms owned by women were less likely than those owned by men to downsize their workforces during the Great Recession. Year-to-year employment reductions were as much as 29% smaller at women-owned firms, even after controlling for industry, size, and...

We use novel data from a leading online job search platform to examine the impact of corporate distress on firms’ ability to attract job applicants. Survey responses suggest that job seekers accurately perceive firms’ financial condition, as measured by companies’ credit default swap...

This article analyzes corporate responses to the liability risk arising from workers' exposure to newly identified carcinogens. We find that firms, especially those with weak balance sheets, tend to respond to such risks by acquiring large, unrelated businesses with relatively high operating...

This article analyzes the effect of competition on a supermarket firm's incentive to provide product quality. In the supermarket industry, product availability is an important measure of quality. Using U.S. Consumer Price Index microdata to track inventory shortfalls, I find that stores facing...

This paper studies the impact of gender quotas for corporate board seats on corporate decisions. We examine the introduction of Norway's 2006 quota, comparing affected firms to other Nordic companies, public and private, that are unaffected by the rule. We find that affected firms undertake...