Using local natural disasters as a quasi-experimental setting, we show that heightened distress risk in shocked firms drives both these firms and their unshocked competitors to cut profit margins by about 0.8 percentage points. These reductions stem from predatory pricing, inventory liquidation,...

We build a competition network that links two industries through their common market leaders. Industries with higher centrality on the competition network have higher expected stock returns because of higher exposure to the cross-industry spillover of distress shocks. The competition intensity...

We build an asset-pricing model with dynamic strategic competition to explain the strong joint fluctuations in aggregate discount rates, competition intensity, profitability, and asset prices. Product market competition endogenously intensifies as discount rates rise, because firms compete more...