Purchase obligations are forward contracts with suppliers and are used more broadly than traded commodity derivatives. This paper is the first to document that these contracts are a risk management tool and have a material impact on corporate hedging activity. Firms that expand their risk...

We explore the sources of gains in horizontal mergers by exploiting heterogeneity between the merging firms' geographic footprints. We calculate the geographic overlap between the bidder, target, and their rivals and customers to identify variation in the competitive impact of horizontal...

A firm's customers and suppliers make relationship-specific investments (RSI) whose value reduces if the firm undertakes risky investments. We hypothesize that the risk-taking incentives in the firm CEO's compensation will lower the RSI by firms up and down in the vertical channel. We provide...

We examine how access to bank credit affects trade credit in the supplier-customer relationships of U.S. public firms. For identification, we use exogenous liquidity shocks to supplier firms in the form of staggered changes to interstate bank branching laws. Using a variety of tests, we show...

Using hand-collected data on chief executive officer (CEO) non-compete agreements (NCAs), we find that NCAs are less likely when CEOs expect to incur greater personal costs from reduced job mobility and more likely when firms expect to suffer greater economic harm if departing CEOs work for...

We examine the effect of risk-shifting incentives on the relation between collateral and corporate borrowing capacity. The increase in gold prices during the 2008-2009 financial crisis provided a positive shock to the collateral value of gold firms, in contrast to the average firm that...

Using a sample of key supplier-customer relationships, we investigate whether an auditor common to a supplier and customer firm reduces information asymmetry between the two parties, leading to an increase in relationship-specific investments. We find evidence that the presence of a common...

Using hand-collected data on CEO non-compete agreements (NCAs), we find that CEOs are less likely to have NCAs when they face greater employment risk and more likely when firms expect to suffer greater harm if departing CEOs work with competitors in some capacity. Additionally, we find that the...