In many industries, competition is far from perfect and managerial efficiency (or a fixed cost) varies among firms. However, traditional measurement of technological progress assumes perfect competition and no fixed cost. This paper incorporates these two factors in the technological-progress...

Traditional methods for evaluating corporate credit risk rarely consider the impact of the macro economy on corporate value and performance. We argue that lenders and management can obtain valuable information about the need for and approach to restructuring by decomposing default predictions...

We analyze the role of bank mergers as determinants of the evolution of branch presence at the county level. Panel regressions based on county-level branch density are used to study differences across urban versus rural counties as well as pre- and post-crisis. The results indicate that bank...

We use detailed micro data to document a causal response of local retail price to changes in house prices, with elasticities of 15%-20% across housing booms and busts. Notably, these price responses are largest in zip codes with many homeowners, and non-existent in zip codes with mostly renters....

With functionally efficient capital markets, we expect capital to flow more to the industries with the best growth opportunities. As a result, these industries should invest more and see their assets grow more relative to industries with the worst growth opportunities. We find that industries...

We first confirm the interdependence of the United States and the Asia-Pacific region, and explore the real linkage through trade and investment, and the financial linkage through stock markets. These linkages are strengthened by the recent information technology (IT) revolution. The pairwise...

In 2008-2009, the US and the UK undertook quantitative easing to drive interest rates to near zero to combat the Global Financial Crisis, and China increased the growth rate of base money slightly. The resulting credit growth was very slight in US and UK but over 100% in China. The US and UK...

During the recent financial crisis, there was a dramatic spike, across all industries, in the volatility of individual firm share prices after adjustment for movements in the market as a whole. In this Article, we demonstrate that a similar spike has occurred with each major downturn in the...

The leverage of unregulated U.S. corporations has decreased markedly since 1992. We find greater power by institutional investors explains part of this deleveraging trend. Removing legal barriers enhanced institutions' influence and enabled them to induce firms to move toward more efficient...

We consider the dynamic relationship between product market entry regulation and equilibrium unemployment. The main theoretical contribution is combining a job matching model with monopolistic competition in the goods market and individual bargaining. We calibrate the model to US data and...