Using a recently developed measure of financial market risk perceptions, we show that market risk perceptions affect firm-level corporate investment and financing. While multiple channels drive these results, we find evidence that firms cater to investors’ preferences. When perceived risk is...

Firms' perceived cost of green capital has decreased since the rise of sustainable investing. Green and brown firms perceived their cost of capital to be the same before 2016, but after the post-2016 surge in sustainable investing, green firms perceived their cost of capital to be on average 1...

Using case studies of two investment companies, this paper highlights that organizations may have “investment tribes,” i.e., groups of individuals who appear to exhibit similar risk tendencies for gambles involving gains or losses, possibly with a wide spread of risk preferences. Tribes and...

Investment organizations are complex to understand because decisions are the aggregation of multiple individuals who influence the process. This applies to organizations that apply both quantitative and qualitative investment approaches because the first step in a quantitative approach is still...

This paper examines the link between managerial overconfidence, conservative accounting and investment. Using Japanese firm data, we estimate a q investment model incorporating real options effects. Consistent with prior studies, we find that managerial overconfidence increases investment--cash...

This paper explores whether national culture explains the deviation from the optimal investment, as measured by under- and over-investment compared to the optimal investment level, and the impact of this deviation across cultural dimensions on shareholders’ wealth. Using an international...

Nepotism emerges in a multiplicity of contexts from political assignments to firm hiring decisions, but what are its real effects on the economy? This paper explores how nepotism affects corporate investment. To measure nepotism, we build a unique dataset of family connections among individuals...

I show that an alignment in partisan affiliation between a firm’s management and the president in power is associated with higher levels of investment by the firm. Using insider trading data, I find that managers become more optimistic about their companies’ prospects when their preferred...

The authors show that there is a negative relationship between economic policy uncertainty (EPU) and firm overinvestment using Korean data from 2007 to 2016. Since Jensen (1986) shows that a firm's free cash flow is an important factor of overinvestment, the authors examine how free cash flow...

Using detailed project-level data, we document a novel mechanism through which information externalities distort investment. Firms anticipate information spillover from peers’ investment decisions and delay project exercise to learn from their peers’ outcomes. To establish a causal...