This paper investigates the value of firm political connections to US congressional candidates using a regression discontinuity design. In a sample of close special elections occurring at times unrelated to firm-specific economic events or broader political events, I compare the abnormal returns...

We document a new "policy sensitivity" channel of corporate political contributions. Firms that are highly sensitive to government policy uncertainty have a stronger incentive to contribute to political candidates, and these firms' risk-taking and performance should be more affected by the gain...

From 2010--2015, a group of traders illegally accessed earnings information hours before their public release by hacking several major newswire services. We use their informed trading as a natural experiment to investigate how efficiently markets incorporate private information in trades. 15\%...

Consumer credit access decreases by 4.5% to 8% when a borrower's home-state U.S. Senator chairs a powerful Senate committee. Credit access declines because lenders connected to powerful politicians feel protected and hence view fair-lending regulations as being less binding. We find that credit...

Consumers lose access to credit when their congressional district boundaries are irregularly redrawn to benefit a political party (i.e., are gerrymandered). We identify this effect by matching a longitudinal panel of consumer credit data with changes in congressional district boundaries...

This paper investigates the value of firm political connections using a regression discontinuity design in a sample of close, off-cycle U.S. congressional elections. I compare firms donating to winning candidates and firms donating to losing candidates and find that post-election abnormal equity...

The Fama-French factors are ubiquitous in empirical finance, industry, and law. We find that factor returns differ substantially depending on when the data were downloaded. The effects of these retroactive changes are large. Holding the sample period constant and varying only factor vintages, we...

This paper investigates the value of firm political connections to US congressional candidates using a regression discontinuity design. In a sample of close special elections occurring at times unrelated to firm-specific economic events or broader political events, I compare the abnormal returns...

We use the post-IPO market to examine this accuracy of price adjustment to new information. The unique setting of immediate aftermarket allows us to assess subject after the trading has just begun and investors possess little information about stock return properties. They are, therefore, likely...