Consumer credit access decreases by 4.5% to 8% when a borrower's home-state U.S. Senator chairs a powerful Senate committee. Credit access declines because lenders connected to powerful politicians feel protected and hence view fair-lending regulations as being less binding. We find that credit...

We document a new "policy sensitivity" channel of corporate political contributions. Firms that are highly sensitive to government policy uncertainty have a stronger incentive to contribute to political candidates, and these firms' risk-taking and performance should be more affected by the gain...

We exploit unexpected corporate data breaches to study how firms respond to negative reputation events. Data breaches negatively affect firm profitability, value, and reputation for years following the event, but are not triggered by high or low reputations. In response, firms increase their...

In the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, the U.S. equity markets have witnessed a surge in the number of publicly listed companies. Using data for the three major U.S. stock exchanges (AMEX, NYSE, and NASDAQ), we find that the number of publicly traded companies went from 4,144 at the end of...

This paper investigates how corporate tax changes affect workers’ earnings. We use a dataset of U.S. worker-level W-2 filings matched with corporate tax returns and study the implementation of the Domestic Production Activities Deduction (DPAD). We find the DPAD tax rate reduction has a...

How does going public affect firms’ tax obligations and tax planning? Using a panel of U.S. corporate tax return data from 1994 to 2018, we compare tax payments for firms that completed an IPO with those that filed for an IPO but later withdrew and remained private. We find that in the years...