I show that households' demand for retail deposits decreases during stock market booms, which induces a contraction in bank lending and a decrease in real activity at bank-dependent firms. I identify this channel using geographic heterogeneity in households' stock market participation. Banks in...

This paper tests how collateral value affects a firm's choice between bank debt and public debt by considering the exogenous variation in the market value of a firm's real estate assets caused by fluctuations in local real estate prices. Using local land supply elasticities as an instrument for...

Using novel data on detailed country-level sales exposures of U.S. multinational companies (MNCs) and unique identification strategies, we show that international cash flow diversification enhances firm debt capacity, but the magnitude of this effect varies with the innate country institutional...

Theory and recent evidence suggest that overvalued firms can create value for shareholders if they exploit their overvaluation by using their stock as currency to purchase less overvalued firms. We challenge this idea and show that, in practice, overvalued acquirers significantly overpay for...

The rapid increase in U.S. house prices during the 2001--2006 period was accompanied by a historically rapid expansion of bank assets. We exploit cross-regional variation in local housing booms to study how housing demand shocks affected the growth of the banking sector. We estimate the effect...

The past two decades have witnessed a sharp surge in corporate equity payout. The annual net equity payout of non-financial public companies in the U.S. averaged $525 billion (in 2010 dollars) per year from 2004 to 2019, compared to only $141 billion during the prior 17-year period. Using...

Despite the economic importance of the U.S. stock market, there is strikingly little evidence of its impact on elections. Using county-level variation in stock market participation, we document a causal impact of market returns on election outcomes. High-participation counties are more likely to...

The rapid increase in U.S. house prices during the 2001–2006 period was accompanied by a historically rapid expansion of bank assets. We exploit cross-regional variation in local housing booms to study how housing demand shocks affected the growth of the banking sector. We estimate the effect...