Interpreting accruals as working capital investment, we hypothesize that firms rationally adjust their investment to respond to discount rate changes. Consistent with the optimal investment hypothesis, we document that (i) the predictive power of accruals for future stock returns increases with...

We study the uneven effects of a commodity boom, documenting its impact across workers based on their skill and on the region where they live. To this end, we develop a dynamic quantitative model of an economy with many regions connected through interregional trade and migration. Empirically, we...