Using randomized control trials (RCTs) applied over time in different countries, we study whether the economic environment affects how agents learn from new information. We show that as inflation rose in advanced economies, both households and firms became more attentive and informed about...

We suggest that dispersion in news sentiment, representing the dispersion in informative M&A performance forecasts, effectively captures M&A information uncertainty, disseminates information about transaction risks, and enhances investors' ability to discern high-risk acquisition attempts. We...

Using randomized control trials (RCTs) applied over time in different countries, we study how the economic environment affects how agents learn from new information. We show that as inflation has recently risen in advanced economies, both households and firms have become more attentive and...

Using randomized control trials (RCTs) applied over time in different countries, we study how the economic environment affects how agents learn from new information. We show that as inflation has recently risen in advanced economies, both households and firms have become more attentive and...

Using randomized control trials (RCT) applied over time in different countries, we study how the economic environment affects how agents learn from new information. We show that as inflation has risen in developed economies, both households and firms have become more attentive and informed about...

Does media coverage of a firm have a causal effect on the volatility of its stock price and, if so, is this of aggregate importance? This paper identifies a robust link between media coverage in the Financial Times print newspaper and a firm's intra-day stock price volatility. This effect is not...

Does media coverage of a firm have a causal effect on the volatility of its stock price and, if so, is this of aggregate importance? This paper identifies a robust link between media coverage in the Financial Times print newspaper and a firm’s intra-day stock price volatility. This effect is...

Using randomized control trials (RCTs) applied over time in different countries, we study how the economic environment affects how agents learn from new information. We show that as inflation has recently risen in advanced economies, both households and firms have become more attentive and...

The recent financial downturn raised concerns about the materiality of information on financial risk exposition. A wave of litigation has risen, where plaintiffs argue that public companies did not disclose appropriately their exposition in different types of financial instruments, including...

We examine the effects of local newspapers on firms’ information environments. With newspaper employment dropping precipitously in the last few decades, we posit that these changes will have a detrimental effect on local firms’ information environments. Consistent with local news improving...

Amid growing interest in industrial policy, we develop a model exploring the tension between market-driven information discovery and policymakers' career incentives. While market-based information discovery can help address informational barriers faced by policymakers, career incentives may lead...

The Census Bureau's Longitudinal Business Database (LBD) underpins many studies of firm-level behavior. It tracks longitudinally all employers in the nonfarm private sector but lacks information about business financing and owner characteristics. We address this shortcoming by linking LBD...

"The Routledge Companion to Business Journalism provides a complete and critical survey of the field of business and economic journalism. Beginning by exploring crucial questions of the moment, the volume goes on to address such topics as: the history of the field, differentiation among business...

We test and compare the effects of introduction of two new financial information technologies, EDGAR and XBRL, on well-known asset pricing anomalies often attributed to mispricing. EDGAR facilitates easier access to public accounting information about public firms; XBRL reduces the cost of...

We revisit the relationship between firm competition and real efficiency in a novel setting with informational feedback from financial markets. Although intensified competition can decrease market concentration in production, it reduces the value of proprietary information (e.g., market...

This study provides evidence on the role of public firms’ financial reports in the state-bond secondary market. I investigate the informational role of corporate earnings announcements and find that public firms’ monthly earnings signals aggregated to the state level are positively...

It is sometimes argued that news reports in the media suffer from biased reporting. Mullainathan and Shleifer (2002) argue that there are two types of media bias. One bias, called ideology, reflects a news outlet's desire to affect reader opinions in a particular direction. The second bias,...

Using randomized control trials (RCTs) applied over time in different countries, we study how the economic environment affects how agents learn from new information. We show that as inflation has recently risen in advanced economies, both households and firms have become more attentive and...

The amount of information produced about firms' productivities and about the quality of collateral backing their loans varies over time. These information dynamics determine the evolution of credit, output and productivity, which feeds back into incentives to produce information. We characterize...

We investigate the role of evidence-based information in shaping individuals' preferences for trade policies through a series of survey experiments that contain randomized information treatments. Each treatment provides a concise statement of economics research findings on how openness to trade...

Investors may under-diversify their portfolios by overweighting securities in which they perceive an informational advantage or by underweighting securities to hedge risks outside the portfolio. We investigate under-diversification in institutional portfolio construction by examining the...

I propose a new model-free method for estimating long-run changes in expected volatility using VIX futures contracts. The method is applied to measure the effect on stock market volatility of scheduled macroeconomic news announcements. I find that looking at long-run changes gives qualitatively...

We test the association between CFO effort and the quality of public firms' financial information environments. We evaluate this relation using a measure of CFO leisure consumption – specifically, the amount of golf played – as an inverse proxy for effort. We find that CFOs consume more...

Concave hiring rules imply that firms respond more to bad shocks than to good shocks. They provide a unified explanation for several seemingly unrelated facts about employment growth in macro and micro data. In particular, they generate countercyclical movement in both aggregate conditional...

Financial (il-)literacy and its effects have been studied extensively in recent years. The measurement of this concept is, however, tricky and numerous measurement instruments exist. In this paper, we study the connection between these measures empirically. We find that these measures are often...