We study the impact and propagation of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) via subsidiary networks of U.S. multinational corporations (MNCs). We find that increases in host-country EPU lead to significant decreases in MNC valuations. We document heterogeneous effects across important firm- and...

The past two decades have witnessed a sharp surge in corporate equity payout. The annual net equity payout of non-financial public companies in the U.S. averaged $525 billion (in 2010 dollars) per year from 2004 to 2019, compared to only $141 billion during the prior 17-year period. Using...

Despite the economic importance of the U.S. stock market, there is strikingly little evidence of its impact on elections. Using county-level variation in stock market participation, we document a causal impact of market returns on election outcomes. High-participation counties are more likely to...

The rapid increase in U.S. house prices during the 2001–2006 period was accompanied by a historically rapid expansion of bank assets. We exploit cross-regional variation in local housing booms to study how housing demand shocks affected the growth of the banking sector. We estimate the effect...

This paper studies whether the fiscal stimulus programs during the 2020-2021 COVID-19 pandemic contributed to the sharp rise in house prices during the same period. Exploiting the variation in the share of local population eligible for the historic $900 billion economic impact payments and...

Because the personal tax treatments of interest and dividend income likely affect the relative cost of debt and equity financing, a sharp change in tax treatment could affect firms' optimal leverage. This paper examines the effect of the 2003 equity income tax cut on firms' debt usage. Because...