This paper examines the extent to which individual investors provide liquidity to the stock market, and whether they are compensated for doing so. We show that the ability of aggregate retail order imbalances, contrarian in nature, to predict short-term future returns is signifi cantly enhanced...

Typical government responses to pandemics involve social distancing measures designed to curb disease propagation. We evaluate the impact of state-mandated business closures in the context of the Covid-19 crisis in the US. Using state-level variations in the set of sectors forced to shut down,...

We analyze the effect of import competition on household balance sheets from 2000 to 2007 using individual data on consumer finances. We exploit variation in exposure to foreign competition using industry-level shipping costs and initial differences in regions' industry specialization to study...

We study the impact of Quickpay, a federal reform that indefinitely accelerated payments to small business contractors of the U.S. government. We find a strong direct effect of the reform on employment growth at the firm-level. Importantly, how-ever, we also document substantial crowding out of...

We investigate how globalization is reflected in asset prices. We use shipping costs to measure firms' exposure to globalization. Firms in low shipping cost industries carry a 7 percent risk premium, suggesting that their cash-flows covary negatively with investors' marginal utility. We find...

We study the employment effects of loan guarantee programs aiming at mitigating financing frictions for small businesses. Exploiting worker-level panel data combined with plausibly exogenous heterogeneity in policy generosity across French regions, we find that such programs have a significant...

In 2011, the Federal government accelerated payments to their small business contractors, spanning virtually every county and industry in the US. We study the impact of this reform on industry-county employment growth over the subsequent three years. Despite firms being paid just 15 days sooner,...

This paper examines whether firm-level idiosyncratic shocks propagate in production networks. We identify idiosyncratic shocks with the occurrence of natural disasters. We find that affected suppliers impose substantial output losses on their customers, especially when they produce specific...

In 2011, the federal government accelerated payments to their small business contractors, spanning virtually every county and industry in the US. We study the impact of this reform on county-sector employment growth over the subsequent three years. Despite firms being paid just 15 days sooner,...