The 2006 change in the disclosure requirements for "Acquired Fund Fees and Expenses" (AFFE) led to the exclusion of business development companies (BDCs) from major stock indexes in 2014, constituting a contractionary shock to the flow of equity capital into publicly traded BDCs. In a...

Using the market for initial coin offerings (ICOs) as a laboratory, we provide evidence that entrepreneurs use retention to alleviate information asymmetry. The underlying technology and the absence of regulation make the ICO market well suited to study this question empirically. Using a...

We use market data on corporate bonds and equities to measure the value of U.S. corporate assets and their payouts to investors. In contrast to per share equity dividends, total corporate payouts are very volatile, turn negative when corporations raise capital, and are acyclical. This challenges...

Basel III requires countercyclical capital buffers to protect the banking system from periods of excessive credit growth and leverage buildup. In this paper, I provide a rationale for time-varying capital requirements in a dynamic general equilibrium setting. An optimal policy trades off reduced...

There have been stark differences in the ability of low-income and high-income individuals to protect themselves during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a triple difference specification, we document that debt burdens contribute to this inequity by disproportionately increasing the cost to...