We present evidence that banking development plays a key role in technological progress. We focus on manufacturing firms' innovative performance, measured by patent-based metrics, and employ exogenous variations in banking development arising from the staggered deregulation of banking activities...

We use exogenous changes in the size of local municipalities in Denmark to estimate the effect of political power on the income of politicians and their family members. We exploit two dimensions of political power: heterogeneity in politicians' roles within a given district, and exogenous...

We use exogenous changes in Danish local municipality sizes to identify a large positive effect of political power on the profitability of firms related by family to local politicians. Our difference-in-differences estimate is consistent with a unitary elasticity of connected firms' performance...

I empirically investigate the effect of social capital on family control in a comprehensive data set from Italy. Exploiting historically-driven variations in social capital provided by the experience of self-government during the Middle Ages, I find that when social capital is weak, family...

It is well-known that luck increases the compensation of CEOs at their current firm. In this paper, we explore how luck affects CEOs' outside options in the labor market, and the performance of firms that hire lucky CEOs. Our results show that luck at their current firm makes CEOs move to a new...