We use major toxic chemical spills as shocks to the pollution risk of their local neighborhoods and examine the consequent effects on local small businesses. A key finding is that pollution shocks contribute to increases in business concentration in their local economy because of their...

We propose a new measure of the exploratory activities of companies based on the idea that experimentation with new courses of action and the need to describe them entails the adoption of new words in firm regulatory disclosures. Unlike traditional indicators, such as R&D spending, the proposed...

Using detailed micro-level data, we show that individuals' beliefs about climate change influence their choice and level of flood insurance coverage. Our empirical strategy exploits the heterogeneous impact of widening partisan polarization on climate change beliefs after the 2016 general...

We document substantial variation across startups in whether and when they appoint outside directors, and the type of directors they appoint. The startup-director match depends on professional connections and individual experience profiles. Early-stage investors are more likely to serve as...

We evaluate a major Indian investor protection reform that attempted to reduce commissions tied to mutual fund sales by banning the distribution fees that mutual funds had previously earmarked for commissions. We identify the policy impact by comparing funds charging high versus low distribution...

Using unique hand-collected data on startups that were seed-funded by individual angel investors, I show that social connections between angels and entrepreneurs, obtained via schools, past employment and ethnicity, positively influence investment decisions of angels, and the subsequent...

We extend Hayes and Schaefer (2009) model to derive testable hypotheses for the existence of the peer-group effect in the CEO labor market. Our model predicts higher growth in relative compensation for CEOs under higher firm-level productivity. The model also predicts increase in peer-group...