We propose a new measure of the economic importance of each innovation. Our measure uses newly collected data on patents issued to US firms in the 1926 to 2010 period, combined with the stock market response to news about patents. Our patentlevel estimates of private economic value are...

We show that familiarity affects the portfolio decisions of mutual fund managers. Controlling for fund location, funds overweight stocks from their managers' home states by 12% compared to their peers. In team-managed funds, home-state overweighting is 37% larger than the fund location effect....

We study the importance of trust in the investment advisory industry by exploiting the geographic dispersion of victims of the Madoff Ponzi scheme. Residents of communities that were more exposed to the fraud subsequently withdrew assets from investment advisers and increased deposits at banks....

Using exogenous wealth shocks stemming from the collapse of the housing market, we show that managers who experience substantial losses in their home values subsequently reduce the risk in their delegated funds. The decline in fund risk comes through reductions in idiosyncratic risk and tracking...

We develop a general equilibrium model of asset prices in which the benefits of technological innovation are distributed asymmetrically. Financial market participants do not capture all the economic rents resulting from innovative activity, even when they own shares in innovating firms. Economic...

We find that small innovators earn higher returns than small non-innovators for up to five years. We find no such innovation premium among large firms. A battery of tests shows that this innovation premium among small firms is explained by risk. Our findings, which are based on a simple measure...

We show information spillovers limit the effectiveness of targeted debt relief programs. We study individuals who learn about the likelihood of debt relief from the recent experiences of workplace peers filing for bankruptcy protection. Peers granted bankruptcy can discharge debts, while peers...

We investigate the importance of client relationships in the financial advisory industry. We exploit firm-level variation in adoption of the Broker Protocol, which enabled clients to follow their advisers to member firms without fear of litigation. We show that advisers' ability to maintain...

Using all trading in Finland over a fifteen-year period, I study the relation between price changes and the trading of individuals and financial institutions. On average, prices increase when institutions buy from individuals, and decrease when institutions sell to individuals. No such...