Publications

From 1980 to 2000, the rise in the US college/high school graduate wage gap coincided with increased geographic sorting as college graduates concentrated in high wage, high rent cities. This paper estimates a structural spatial equilibrium model…

Solar photovoltaic (PV) installations in the United States have been deployed at a rapid pace in recent years, a development that is attributed in significant part to the federal Investment Tax Credit (ITC). Yet, this credit is scheduled to step-…

Courts resolve individual disputes and create principles of law to justify their decisions and guide the resolution of future cases. Those tasks present informational challenges that affect the whole judicial process. Judges must simultaneously…

Polygeneration energy systems (PES) have the potential to provide a flexible, high-efficiency, and low-emissions alternative for power generation and chemical synthesis from fossil fuels. This study aims to assess the economic value of fossil-…

We evaluate the effects of the 2009 Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) that provided intermediaries with sizeable financial incentives to renegotiate mortgages. HAMP increased intensity of renegotiations and prevented substantial number…

We study a Bayesian persuasion game in the context of real options. The Sender (firm) chooses signals to reveal to the Receiver (regulator) each period but has no long-term commitment power. The Receiver chooses when to exercise the option,…

Among typical entrepreneurs, is serial entrepreneurship common? Is the serial entrepreneur more likely to succeed? If so, why? These questions are addressed using data on all establishments started between 1990 and 2011 to sell retail goods and…

Co-production (simultaneous production of multiple outputs) occurs in some emission-intensive basic material and agricultural industries. This paper is motivated by ones in which a supplier sells its primary product to a buyer that incurs an…

This paper examines the approaches accounting researchers use to draw causal inferences using observational (or non-experimental) data. The vast majority of accounting research papers draw causal inferences notwithstanding the well-known…

In a large-scale field experiment, we demonstrate that advertising can serve as a signal that enhances consumers’ evaluations of advertised goods. We implement the experiment on a mobile search platform that provides listings and reviews for an…

You’ve probably heard the expression “It’s not what you know, but who you know, that matters.” The sentiment is rather demotivating. After all, why go the extra mile if success is just determined by connections?

Recently, the Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University conducted a nationwide survey of 1,202 individuals — representative by gender, race, age, political affiliation, household income, and state residence — to understand…

Recently, Heidrick & Struggles and the Rock Center for…

Recent advances in information technology have allowed firms to gather vast amounts of data regarding consumers’ preferences and the structure and intensity of their social interactions. This paper examines a game-theoretic model of competition…

A variety of approaches have been recently proposed to automatically infer users’ personality from their user generated content in social media. Approaches differ in terms of the machine learning algorithms and the feature sets used, type of…

The existing theoretical literature provides little justification for a corporate debt subsidy. We illustrate the welfare benefit of this subsidy and study how the social costs and benefits change with the duration of industry distress. In our…

What makes an asset a “safe asset”? We study a model where two countries each issue sovereign bonds to satisfy investors’ safe asset demands. The countries differ in the float of their bonds and their resources/fundamentals available to rollover…

We analyze participation in international environmental agreements in a dynamic game in which countries pollute and invest in green technologies. If complete contracts are feasible, participants eliminate the holdup problem associated with their…

We show that firms׳ idiosyncratic volatility obeys a strong factor structure and that shocks to the common idiosyncratic volatility (CIV) factor are priced. Stocks in the lowest CIV-beta quintile earn average returns 5.4% per year higher than…

Capital regulation is critical to address distortions and externalities from intense conflicts of interest in banking and from the failure of markets to counter incentives for recklessness. The approaches to capital regulation in Basel III and…