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...

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...

This paper studies whether and how the contractual horizon of venture capital funds affects their investments in innovative firms. I find that funds with a longer remaining horizon select younger companies at an earlier stage of their development, which grow their patent stock significantly more...

Financial strength enhances firms' ability to extend trade credit, which confers a comparative advantage in the product market. To test this idea and its implications, I consider the effect of an exogenous restriction on the trade credit supplied by French trucking firms. In a...

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,...

The health crisis caused by the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus has led many countries to implement drastic social distancing rules. By reducing the quantity of labor, social distancing in turn leads to a drop in output which is difficult to quantify without taking into account relationships...

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...