Using a new trademark-based product market competition measure and a novel trademark-merger dataset over the period 1983-2016, we show that companies facing greater product market competition are more likely to be acquirers. We further show that postmerger, compared to their non-acquiring peers,...

After fitting a topic model to 79,597 COVID-19-related paragraphs in 11,183 conference calls over the period January to April 2020, we obtain measures of firm-level exposure and response to COVID-19 for 3,019 U.S. firms. We show that despite many different ways through which COVID-19 affects...

Examining the effect of beauty on labor market outcomes has become a growing field of labor economics. In fact, the way the labor market rewards physical attractiveness has become an important underlying determinant of wage discrimination, as well as the gender wage gap. In this article, we...

A novel electrochemical immunoassay based on nanobody heptamer for ultrasensitive detection of alpha fetoprotein (AFP) is proposed. First, AFP heptamer fusion protein (A1-C4bpa) is prepared via fusing the AFP-specific nanobody (A1) with the C-terminal fragment of C4-binding protein (C4bpa). Then...

Hygroelectricity - an interaction between moisture and hydrophilic materials results electricity generation. The whole-cell films are advantageous for sustainable hygroelectric generator (HEG) application because of readily availability, abundance and environmental compatibility, but it is not...