Terrorist attacks influence economic growth and individual psychology. However, identifying the direct effect of terrorism on economics and psychology is difficult because institutions also change in response to terrorist attacks. This paper controls for institutional responses to terrorist...

This paper exploits hand-collected data on illegal insider trades to test whether standard illiquidity measures can detect informed trading. Controlling for unobserved cross-sectional and time-series variation, sampling bias, and strategic timing of insider trades, I find that only absolute...

This paper investigates whether corporate political influence affects government investment decisions. We study the efficacy of the various forms of political influence, ranging from the relatively passive connections between firms and politicians, such as those based on politicians’ voting...

Using hand-collected data on divisional managers at the S&P 500 firms, we provide one of the first studies of their role in internal capital budgeting. Divisional managers with connections to the CEO receive more capital. Managers’ informal connections, such as social ties to the CEO, outweigh...

We study the effect of government assistance on bank risk taking. Using hand-collected data on bank applications for government investment funds, we investigate the effect of both application approvals and denials. To distinguish banks? risk taking behavior from changes in economic conditions,...