We conduct beauty contest experiments, using close to 2,000 subjects to study the facial traits of CEOs. In one experiment we use pairs of photographs and find that subjects rate CEO faces as appearing more "competent" and less "likable" than non-CEO faces. Another experiment matches CEOs from...

We survey 1,050 CFOs in the U.S., Europe, and Asia to assess whether their firms are credit constrained during the global credit crisis of 2008. We study whether corporate spending plans differ conditional on this measure of financial constraint. Our evidence indicates that constrained firms...

Financial openness is often associated with higher rates of economic growth. We show that the impact of openness on factor productivity growth is more important than the effect on capital growth. This explains why the growth effects of liberalization appear to be largely permanent, not...

We propose a new, valuation-based measure of world equity market segmentation. While we observe decreased levels of segmentation in many developing countries, the level of segmentation is still significant. In contrast to previous research, we characterize the factors that account for variation...

Miscalibration is a standard measure of overconfidence in both psychology and economics. Although it is often used in lab experiments, there is scarcity of evidence about its effects in practice. We test whether top corporate executives are miscalibrated, and whether their miscalibration impacts...

In almost every area of empirical finance, researchers are confronted with multiple tests. One high profile example is the identification of investment managers that outperform. Many beat their benchmarks purely by luck. Multiple testing methods are designed to control for luck. Factor selection...

Using 14,800 forecasts of one-year S&P 500 returns made by Chief Financial Officers over a 12-year period, we track the individual executives who provide multiple forecasts to study how their beliefs evolve dynamically. While CFOs' return forecasts are systematically unbiased, their confidence...

Cryptocurrency refers to a type of digital asset that uses distributed ledger, or blockchain, technology to enable a secure transaction. Although the technology is widely misunderstood, many central banks are considering launching their own national cryptocurrency. In contrast to most data in...

The rate of factor production in the academic research is out of control. We document over 400 factors published in top journals. Surely, many of them are false. We explore the incentives that lead to factor mining and explore reasons why many of the factors are simply lucky findings. The...

The multiple testing problem plagues many important issues in finance such as fund and factor selection. Many look good purely by luck. There are a number of statistical techniques to control for multiplicity that reduce Type I errors - but it is unknown by how much. We propose a new way to...