This paper asks whether startups react more to changing investment opportunities than more mature firms do. We use the fact that a region's pre-existing industrial structure creates exogenous variation in the severity of its exposure to nation-wide manufacturing shocks to develop an instrument...

This paper proposes a new measure of technological obsolescence using detailed patent data. Using this measure, we present two sets of results. First, firms' technological obsolescence foreshadows substantially lower growth, productivity, and reallocation of capital. This finding applies mainly...

We study the optimal allocation of R&D resources in an endogenous growth model with an innovation network, through which one sector's past innovations may benefit other sectors' future innovations. First, we provide closed-form sufficient statistics for the optimal path of R&D resource...

Persuasive communication functions not only through content but also delivery, e.g., facial expression, tone of voice, and diction. This paper examines the persuasiveness of delivery in start-up pitches. Using machine learning (ML) algorithms to process full pitch videos, we quantify persuasion...

This paper investigates the role of private equity (PE) in failed bank resolutions after the 2008 financial crisis, using proprietary FDIC failed bank acquisition data. PE investors made substantial investments in underperforming and riskier failed banks, particularly in geographies where local...

This paper studies how innovative firms manage their innovation portfolios after filing for Chapter 11 reorganization using three decades of data. We find that they sell off core (i.e., technologically critical and valuable), rather than peripheral, patents in bankruptcy. The selling pattern is...

Across a broad range of equipment types and industries, we document a pattern of local capital reallocation from older firms to younger firms. Start-ups purchase a disproportionate share of old physical capital previously owned by more mature firms. The evidence is consistent with financial...

This paper documents differences across higher-education courses in the coverage of frontier knowledge. Comparing the text of 1.7M syllabi and 20M academic articles, we construct the "education-innovation gap," a syllabus's relative proximity to old and new knowledge. We show that courses differ...

Heating, cooling, and powering the residential housing stock accounts for about one-fifth of total annual greenhouse gas emissions in the US. Home size is a key determinant of energy intensity. The average newly built single-family home is 50% larger than in the 1950s. Using distinct...

General Partners (GPs) in private equity face a trade-off between focusing their skills and effort on fewer investments to earn higher returns, or investing more broadly to reduce risk through diversification. Using a novel, deal-level dataset of 5,925 global investments from 1999 to 2016, we...