We analyze the differences between companies owned by private equity (PE) investors and similar public companies. We document that PE-owned companies use much stronger incentives for their top executives and have substantially higher debt levels. However, we find little evidence that PE-owned...

The French Opposition to the war in Iraq in early 2003, prompted calls for a boycott of French wine in the US. We measure the magnitude of consumers%u2019 participation in the boycott, and look at basic evidence of who participates. Conservative estimates indicate that the boycott resulted in...

This study examines the effect of an increase in product quality information to consumers on firms' choices of product quality. In 1998 Los Angeles County introduced hygiene quality grade cards to be displayed in restaurant windows. We show that the grade cards cause (i) restaurant health...

We present a dynamic model of individuals' educational investments that allows us to explore alternative modeling strategies for forecasting future wage distributions. The key innovation we propose is an approach to forecasting that relies only on the information that would be available at the...

A common thread in the theory literature on price discrimination has been the ambiguous welfare effects for consumers and the rise in profit for firms, relative to uniform pricing. In this study I resolve the ambiguity for consumers and quantify the benefit for a firm. I describe a model of...

How can consumers be assured that firms will endeavor to provide good quality when quality is unobservable prior to purchase? We test the hypothesis that reputational incentives are effective at causing restaurants to maintain good hygiene quality. We find that chain affiliation provides...