With the restoration of laissez faire as the governing principle of contemporary economic ideology and policy making, Thorstein Veblen’s insights are once again timely. This book revisits his legacy, featuring original essays by renowned Veblen scholars.

Delegating management of financial decisions may involve both direct and agency costs. We hypothesize that contracting differences between financial planners and brokers may lead to differences in life insurance adequacy. Using nationally representative data, we estimate the impact of the use of...

We explore the determinants of equity price risk of non-financial corporations. Operating and asset characteristics are by far the most important determinants of risk. For the median firm, financial risk accounts for only 15% of observed stock price volatility. Furthermore, financial risk has...

How fiscal policy impacts equity and bond returns is an open question. Unlike previous studies, we address this issue in a way that decomposes current returns into news about cash flows and news about discount rates. Moreover, we use narrative methods to identify plausibly exogenous shocks to...

We explore the determinants of equity price risk for a large sample of non-financial corporations. By estimating both cross-sectional and time-series models, we show that operating and asset characteristics are by far the most important determinants of equity price risk. In contrast, for the...

Short-term redemption fees may prevent investors from frequently trading in and out of mutual funds, which results in an implicit wealth transfer from long- to short-term fund investors. This paper studies determinants and implications of short-term redemption fees. We find that the probability...

We study a set of trading restrictions imposed by Robinhood and other retail-oriented broker-dealers in 38 stocks, including GameStop. Restrictions limit equity and/or options positions. Stock price effects are large, with CARs averaging -13.54% within two hours after a stock’s first trading...