I document a beneficial effect of the government's participation in product markets. Exploiting the 2008-09 financial crisis as a natural experiment, I show that federal procurement contracts insulate government contractors' performance from the crisis. By 2009, government contractors had 19%...

The literature on distressed firms has focused on these firms’ investment, capital structure, and labor decisions. This paper investigates a novel aspect of firm behavior in distress: how financial health affects a firm׳s lobbying and, consequently, its relationship with the government. We...

We examine how firms respond to domestic demand shocks using the large and unanticipated shock to government spending in European periphery countries during the 2010-2011 sovereign debt crisis. We find that firms with higher ex-ante exposure to government procurement contracts significantly...

Financial constraints can cause firms to reduce product quality when quality is difficult to observe. We test this hypothesis in the context of medical choices at hospitals. Using heart attacks and child deliveries, we ask whether hospitals shift towards more profitable treatment options after a...

This paper highlights the importance of middle-class and high-FICO borrowers for the mortgage crisis. Contrary to popular belief, which focuses on subprime and poor borrowers, we show that mortgage originations increased for borrowers across all income levels and FICO scores. The relation...

This paper addresses two critiques by Mian and Sufi (2015a, 2015b) that were released in response to the results documented in Adelino, Schoar and Severino (2015). We confirm that none of the results in our previous paper are affected by the issues put forward in these critiques; in particular...