Social learning plays a limited role in determining movie sales momentum according to recent research by Gilchrist and Sands (2016), who instead emphasize the importance of network externalities. Narrow replication of their robustness test for social learning, which compares sales momentum for...

This paper looks at why local markets have become increasingly dominated by multi-market firms, particularly in the banking industry, where deregulation in the early 1990s lead to extensive branch network expansion. To understand the implications of this profusion of multi-market banks, I...

This paper studies a novel explanation for observed productivity differences among firms in the same industry. Competition is allowed to affect labor productivity, so that heterogeneity in competition affects the demand for skilled labor, leading to differences in firm performance. This...