We provide new evidence on IPOs over the industry life cycle. Less innovative, financially constrained firms seek public equity earlier in an industry's life cycle. Moreover, average profitability of early IPOs is lower when more private capital flows to the industry early in its growth phase....

We document the role of process innovation as a distinct source of corporate technological advantage. Using machine-read textual analysis of 90 million patent claims, we provide the first large-sample empirical evidence that operational cost inefficiencies are the primary driver of process...

We show that divestitures accompanying horizontal mergers affect both the market power potential and the competitive efficiency of merging firms. Stock price reactions of customer firms are more positive (hence divestitures are more effective in mitigating the market power impact of the merger)...

We show that an increase in the cost of unskilled labor leads to more labor-saving innovation. Larger minimum wage increases are associated with larger increases in automation patent applications and citations received by automation patents. These findings are stronger in states with a higher...

We explore the association between a company's investments and the tone of its peers' MD&A disclosures; we ask whether the direction and the strength of this association is affected by product market competition. We find that the direction of the association can differ according to whether...

We show that political uncertainty surrounding elections can affect how corporate investment responds to stock prices. In a large panel of elections around the world, investment is 40% less sensitive to stock prices during election years compared to non-election years. The decrease in...