National Basketball Association (NBA) contracting rules provide plausibly exogenous variation in career concerns near contract end. We use this setting to study how individual career concerns affect risk-taking behavior and can sabotage team performance. Using the frequency and duration of...

We exploit exogenous variation in the timing of gubernatorial elections to study the timing of bank failure in the US. Using hazard analysis, we show that bank failure is about 45% less likely in the year leading up to an election. Political control (i.e. lack of competition) can explain all of...

We show that global political uncertainty, measured by the U.S. election cycle, on average, leads to a fall in equity returns in fifty non-U.S. countries. At the same time, market volatilities rise, local currencies depreciate, and sovereign bond returns increase. The effect of global political...