There is a standard trade-off in contracts between the provision of incentives and insurance. We hypothesize that this trade-off influences the precision with which firm performance is measured. We find that firm outcomes are measured less precisely when chance plays a large role in these...

We use a natural experiment to identify a causal effect of the threat of shareholder litigation on ownership structure, governance, and firm performance. We find that when it becomes harder for small shareholders to litigate, ownership becomes more concentrated and shifts from individuals to...

We examine the impact of investor coordination on governance. We identify coordinating groups of investors ("cliques") as those connected through the network of institutional holdings. Clique members vote together on proxy items: a one-standard-deviation increase in clique ownership more than...

Despite the economic importance of the U.S. stock market, there is strikingly little evidence of its impact on elections. Using county-level variation in stock market participation, we document a causal impact of market returns on election outcomes. High-participation counties are more likely to...

This paper will examine the role cultural beliefs play in the confinement, control, and torture of the human body as acts of justice. Specifically, the work will explore the links between some of the foundational ideas of Christianity and the nature of constitutional law in the United State...