Endowment payouts have become an increasingly important component of universities' revenues in recent decades. We test two leading theories of endowment payouts: (1) universities smooth endowment payouts, or (2) universities use endowments as self-insurance against financial shocks. In contrast...

Using a data set on a large number of retail investors from 1991-96, we find that households exhibit a strong preference for local investment - the average household invests nearly a third of their portfolio in firms headquartered within 250 miles. We test whether this locality bias is driven by...

This paper provides new evidence on the importance of employer stock in the 401(k) portfolios of individual investors, how investment decisions are affected by pension plan design, and what compels firms to offer matching contributions in company stock. After summarizing the quantitative...

Stock option grants to top executives and to employees below the top executive ranks have risen rapidly with stock prices in recent years. This paper examines the growth in stock option grants at Samp;P 1500 companies between 1996 and 1999, and estimates the pay-for-performance sensitivities of...

This paper investigates how the growth of stock option programs has affected corporate payout policy. Given that earnings per share (EPS) is widely used in equity valuation, some corporations may opt to repurchase shares to avoid the dilution of EPS that results from past stock option grants....

Some retirement plans allow the participant to choose how funds are invested. Having to direct investments may provide the participant with financial education. This paper finds that households covered by pension plans in which the employee chooses investments are significantly more apt to hold...

We study the relation between households' stock purchases and stock purchases made by their neighbors. A ten percentage point increase in neighbors' purchases of stocks from an industry is associated with a two percentage point increase in households' own purchases of stocks from that industry....

We study how access to high-skill labor affects the outcomes of start-up firms. We obtain exogenous variation in firms' ability to access skilled labor by using win rates in H-1B visa lotteries. Relative to other firms that also applied for H-1B visas, firms with higher lottery win rates are...

This paper provides new evidence on what types of individuals are most likely to choose a defined contribution (DC) plan over a defined benefit (DB) plan. Making use of administrative data from the State Universities Retirement System (SURS) of Illinois, we study the decisions of nearly 50,000...

This paper uses the receipt of an inheritance to measure the effect of wealth shocks on retirement. Using the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), we first document that inheritance receipt is common among older workers -- one in five households receives an inheritance over an eight-year period,...