I consider two seemingly unrelated puzzles. 1.Why is relative performance evaluation (RPE) used less in CEO compensation than agency theory suggests? 2.Why is sometimes, e.g., for fund managers, a 'modest' performance more highly rewarded than 'very high' performances? I consider a simple...

If entrepreneurs are liquidity constrained and not able to borrow to operate on an efficient scale, economic theory predicts that entrepreneurs with more personal wealth should do better than those with less wealth. We test this hypothesis using a novel dataset covering a large panel of...

To enforce insider trading laws, financial regulators require top executives in listed companies to make their own-company trades public. One implication of this regulatory focus is that executives below the top fly under the radar. We use register data from Norway to examine whether executives...

We study the effects of broadband internet use on the portfolio selection of individual investors. A public program in Norway provides plausibly exogenous variation in internet use. Our instrumental variables estimates show that internet use causes a substantial increase in stock market...

We document three new facts about entrepreneurship. First, a majority of male entrepreneurs start a firm in the same or a closely related industry as their fathers' industry of employment. Second, this tendency is correlated with intelligence: higher-IQ entrepreneurs are less likely to follow...

We show that exposure to an industry during upbringing is closely related to later-in-life entrepreneurial choices and success. A majority of male entrepreneurs start a firm in the same or a closely related industry as their fathers’ industry of employment. The probability of entrepreneurship...