Firm location affects firm risk through local factor prices. We find more procyclical factor prices such as wages and real estate prices in areas with more cyclical economies, namely high “local beta” areas. While procyclical wages provide a natural hedge against aggregate shocks and reduce...

One of the key questions in the study of regulation is whether the costs of regulatory compliance fall homogeneously on all businesses or whether certain firms, for instance small ones, are especially penalized. We quantify firms' compliance costs in terms of their labor spending to adhere to...

This paper studies the asset pricing implications of a firm's opportunities to replace routine-task labor with automation. I develop a model in which firms optimally undertake this replacement when their productivity is low. Hence, firms with routine-task labor maintain a replacement option that...

This paper uses occupational employment and wage data for over 270 industries from 1990 to 2017 to estimate the percentage of an industry’s annual labor costs paid to perform regulation-related tasks. We hypothesize that this measure reflects the intensity of regulations that incentivize firm...

One of the key questions in the study of regulation is whether the costs of regulatory compliance fall homogeneously on all businesses or whether certain firms, for instance small ones, are especially penalized. We quantify firms’ compliance costs in terms of their labor spending to adhere to...