This paper studies how mandating employers to provide health insurance of a minimum quality and the associated increases in health insurance premia affect firm employment and performance. To do so, we use hand-collected firm-level employee health insurance data. We find that employers with...

This paper demonstrates the tacit benefits that accrue to both politicians and the firms to which they are connected through stock ownership. Specifically, we show strong evidence that politicians use private information and political favors for financial gains from stock investments in their...

We explore gender differences in performance in a comprehensive sample of venture capital investments in the United States. Investments by female venture capital investors have significantly lower success rates than investments by their male colleagues controlling for personal characteristics...

This paper investigates how executive employment contracts influence corporate financial policies during the final year of the contract term, using a new, hand-collected data set of CEO employment agreements. On the one hand, the impending expiration of fixed-term employment contracts creates...

There is a strong link between measures of stock market performance and subsequent equity issues. We find that management turnover weakens the link between equity issues and the returns that preceded the new CEO. Moreover, there is a discontinuity in the distribution of equity issues around the...

This paper investigates the effect of social ties between acquirers and targets on merger performance. Using data on educational background and past employment, we construct a measure of the extent of cross-firm social connection between directors and senior executives at the acquiring and the...

This article investigates whether the business relations between mutual funds and brokerage firms influence sell-side analyst recommendations. Using a unique data set that discloses brokerage firms' commission income derived from each mutual fund client as well as the share holdings of these...

We examine how banks respond to large natural disasters when corporate borrowers are located in the neighborhood of the disaster area. We find robust evidence that banks charge significantly higher loan spreads for firms located in the neighborhood of the disaster area than for remote firms. The...

We examine how winning an all-star award affects analyst behavior. Using a novel dataset on analyst rankings, we employ a regression discontinuity design that compares the research outputs of third-place all-star analysts and runner-up analysts who barely miss the distinction. We find that...

How to protect public investors from expropriation by controlling shareholders in firms with concentrated ownership structures continues to be a challenge for many markets including the U.S. In this paper, we examine the effect of having a token minority activist shareholder on improving...