We exploit the merger between BlackRock and Barclays Global Investors to study how changes in expected ownership concentration affect the investment behavior of funds and the cross-section of stocks worldwide. We find that funds with open-end structures and a large exposure to commonly-held...

Using the near universe of online job postings from 2007 to 2019, we construct a firm-level metric of local labor market competition. We find that firms hiring in more competitive labor markets tend to have lower financial leverage. To establish causality, we exploit the establishment of Amazon...

We highlight an important but overlooked characteristic of financial fragility: “fragile” stocks are more liquid because they are sensitive to non-fundamental liquidity shocks. This reduces their sensitivity to corporate actions with price impact and affects the firms’ incentives to engage...