Using the policy uncertainty index of Baker, Bloom, and Davis (2013), we document a strong negative relationship between firm-level capital investment and the aggregate level of uncertainty associated with future policy and regulatory outcomes. More importantly, we find evidence that the...

We examine the relationship between real exchange rate fluctuations and firm-level investment and growth using data for a sample of close to 33,000 firms from 68 advanced and emerging market countries over the 2000-2014 period. We show that real depreciations boost profits, investment, and asset...

We investigate the impact of employee treatment on labor investment efficiency. We provide evidence that employee-friendly treatment is significantly associated with lower deviations of labor investment from the level justified by economic fundamentals, i.e., higher labor investment efficiency....

The accuracy of firm information disclosures and the efficiency of long-term investment both play crucial roles in the economy and capital markets. We estimate a dynamic model that captures a trade-off between these two goals that arises when managers confront realistic incentives to misreport...

Leading production-based asset pricing models predict that the sources of fluctuations in real investment and (scaled) stock prices are the same. Yet, extant empirical findings point to a large difference in these sources. We revisit this empirical question by deriving a present-value relation...

I study how a firm's ability to hire skilled workers affects corporate investment. To this end, I exploit a 2003 policy change that restricted the ability of U.S. firms to employ foreign skilled workers via the H-1B visa program. I find that the reduction in the cap caused a significant decrease...

This study investigates whether economic policy uncertainty (EPU) magnifies peer effects in corporate investment in China. Through use of the peer-firm-average idiosyncratic stock return to capture exogenous variation in peer firms' investment activities, we show that peer effects are stronger...

This article presents one of the most comprehensive studies to date to employ filtering techniques to distinguish between routine and "investment spike" financing. This study documents significant heterogeneity in investment spike financing, particularly by firm size. Further, when spike size or...

What drives a firm's investment decisions in China? While most literature focuses on the role of financial factors (such as cash flow), we explore this most important question in corporate finance from the perspective of economic fundamentals. Empirical results show that private firms cherish...

This article explores the economic effects of checks and balances on corporate investment and employment. I use U.S. gubernatorial election results from 1978 to 2010 as a source of exogenous variation in whether the party controls both the executive and the legislative branch (unified...