Using a new trademark-based product market competition measure and a novel trademark-merger dataset over the period 1983-2016, we show that companies facing greater product market competition are more likely to be acquirers. We further show that postmerger, compared to their non-acquiring peers,...

We identify a positive causal effect of healthy working environments on corporate innovation, using the staggered passage of U.S. state-level smoke-free laws that ban smoking in workplaces. We find a significant increase in patents and patent citations for firms headquartered in states that have...

We compare innovation strategies of public and private firms based on a large sample over the period 1997-2008. We find that public firms' patents rely more on existing knowledge, are more exploitative, and are less likely in new technology classes, while private firms' patents are broader in...

This paper studies the asset pricing implications of industrial pollution. A long-short portfolio constructed from firms with high versus low toxic emission intensity within industry generates an average return of 4.42% per annum, which remains significant after controlling for risk factors. We...

This paper examines two related research questions: (1) Does a firm's innovation strategy affect its going public (vs. staying private) decision? (2) Does the change of ownership associated with going public influence a newly public firm's subsequent innovation strategy? Using a dataset...

Using novel firm- and facility-level measures of corporate environmental performance over the period 2002–2021, we establish a positive association between board gender diversity and corporate environmental performance. For identification, we exploit variations in the legal protection and...