We analyze a unique dataset from a survey of CFOs of diversified firms to examine four areas of diversification and internal capital markets: causes and financing effects of corporate diversification, capital budgeting processes, capital investment methods, and reallocation policies in internal...

We analyze a unique survey dataset to examine the (micro)foundations of capital allocation in firms. Firms employ systems of interconnected measures to counteract agency problems, including layers of approval, divisional budgets, reporting requirements, and compensation schemes. When making...

This paper studies the effects of hedge disclosure requirements on corporate risk management and product market competition. The analysis is based on a simple model of market entry and shows that incumbent firms engage in risk management when these activities remain unobserved by outsiders. The...

We present a dynamic model in which an employee of a firm searches for business projects in a changing environment. It is costly to induce the employee who found a successful project in the past period to search for a new project. Past success can therefore result in profitreducing corporate...

We study how researchers can apply machine learning (ML) methods in finance. We first establish that the two major categories of ML (supervised and unsupervised learning) address fundamentally different problems than traditional econometric approaches. Then, we review the current state of...

Unique administrative data on a representative population's cognitive abilities, spending, and financials reveal that consumers at or below median cognitive abilities barely react when their incentives to spend or borrow change, even if they earn high incomes and are financially unconstrained...

We examine how division managers' human capital affects internal capital allocation using a hand-collected data set of divisional managers at S&P 1,500 firms. Based on a novel measure of division-manager ability, we show that more able division managers receive substantially larger capital...

We study how researchers can apply machine learning (ML) methods in finance. We first establish that the two major categories of ML (supervised and unsupervised learning) address fundamentally different problems than traditional econometric approaches. Then, we review the current state of...

Unconventional fiscal policies incentivize households to accelerate consumption by generating future consumer price ination, and offer an alternative to unconventional monetary policy (Correia et al. (2013)). We use a natural experiment to study the causal effect of unconventional fiscal...