Using friendship data from Facebook, we study the effects of three aspects of social capital on household financial behavior. We find that the most important measure of social capital in explaining stock market and saving participation is Economic Connectedness, defined as the fraction of one's...

A war-related factor model derived from textual analysis of media news reports explains the cross section of expected asset returns. Using a semi-supervised topic model to extract discourse topics from 7,000,000 New York Times stories spanning 160 years, the war factor predicts the cross section...

Using a semi-supervised topic model on 7,000,000 New York Times articles spanning 160 years, we test whether topics of media discourse predict future stock and bond market returns to test rational and behavioral hypotheses about market valuation of disaster risk. Focusing on media discourse...

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 document a causal effect of social interactions on investor behavior using the number of local soccer games as a measure of social interaction intensity. Social transmission is identifiable in buy but not sell trades. The effect of Social Interaction Intensity (SII) on the sensitivity of...

We study how the social transmission of public news influences investors' beliefs and securities markets. Using an extensive dataset to measure investor social networks, we find that earnings announcements from firms in higher-centrality locations generate stronger immediate price and trading...

We model visibility bias in the social transmission of consumption behavior. When consumption is more salient than non-consumption, people perceive that others are consuming heavily, and infer that future prospects are favorable. This increases aggregate consumption in a positive feedback loop....