We study the impact of global volatility on equity portfolio flows of institutional investors worldwide. We find that their equity allocations decrease in times of high volatility; retail investors are net buyers. The effect is present in developed and emerging markets, is economically stronger...

We show that the trade-comovement puzzle - theory's failure to account for the positive relation between trade and business cycle synchronization - is intimately related to its counterfactual implication that short- and long-run trade elasticities are equal. Based on this insight, we show that...

We study the impact of foreign institutional investors on global capital allocation and welfare using novel firm-level international data. Using MSCI index inclusion as an exogenous shock to foreign ownership, we show that greater foreign ownership leads to more informative stock prices and this...

We provide a first empirical analysis of firm commitments to reduce their carbon emissions. A growing fraction of publicly traded companies around the world have already voluntarily made commitments to attain reductions in their emissions by a certain date or to reduce the emission intensity of...

We provide new empirical evidence suggesting that the marginal investor in mutual funds behaves differently across market conditions. If the marginal investor allocates capital across mutual funds rationally, then the relative performance of funds should be unpredictable. We find however that...

The energy transition away from fossil fuels exposes companies to carbon-transition risk. Estimating the market-based premium associated with carbon-transition risk in a cross-section of 14,400 firms in 77 countries, we find higher stock returns associated with higher levels and growth rates of...