Publications

Racial inequity continues to plague America, yet many Whites still doubt the existence of racial advantages, limiting progress and cooperation. What happens when people are faced with evidence that their group benefits from privilege? We suggest…

Empirical work on asset prices suggests that pricing kernels have to be almost perfectly correlated across countries. If they are not, real exchange rates are too smooth to be consistent with high Sharpe ratios in asset markets. However, the…

We study estimation and inference in settings where the interest is in the effect of a potentially endogenous regressor on some outcome. To address the endogeneity, we exploit the presence of additional variables. Like conventional instrumental…

Exchange rates strongly co-vary against their base currency. We uncover a gravity equation in this factor structure: the key determinant of a country’s exchange rate beta on the common base factor is the country’s distance from the base country.…

The extreme fragility of the financial system that gives rise to systemic risk and crises is rooted in the incentives of people within this system and the failure of regulation to counter these incentives. The same forces that increase systemic…

Political institutions often use decision making procedures that create veto players—individuals or groups who, despite lacking direct decision making authority, nevertheless have the power to  block policy change. In this paper we…

This paper documents complex strategic integration (CSI) at Nike that helped drive the company toward developing a global women’s fitness business, which extended the corporate strategy and required collaboration of multiple business units. The…

The existence of important socioeconomic disparities in health and mortality is a well-established fact. Many pathways have been adduced to explain inequality in life spans. In this article we examine one factor that has been somewhat neglected:…

We explore the effects of localized economic shocks from trade on roll-call behavior and electoral outcomes in the U.S. House, 1990–2010. We demonstrate that economic shocks from Chinese import competition — first studied by Autor, Dorn, and…

Using the value that a mutual fund extracts from capital markets as the measure of skill, we find that the average mutual fund has used this skill to generate about $3.2 million per year. We document large cross-sectional differences in skill…

We examine the ability of the government to impact mortgage refinancing activity and spur consumption by focusing on the Home Affordable Refinancing Program (HARP). The policy allowed intermediaries to refinance insufficiently collateralized…

Does naturalization cause better political integration of immigrants into the host society? Despite heated debates about citizenship policy, there exists almost no evidence that isolates the independent effect of naturalization from the…

This article explores the application of oblivious equilibrium (OE) to highly concentrated markets. We define a natural extended notion of OE, called partially oblivious equilibrium (POE), that allows for there to be a set of strategically…

Corporate governance experts pay considerable attention to issues involving the board of directors. Because of the scope of the board’s role and the vast responsibilities that come with directorship, companies are expected to adhere to common…

How and by how much do supervisors enhance worker productivity? Using a company-based data set on the productivity of technology-based services workers, we estimate supervisor effects and find them to be large. Replacing a boss who is in the…

For much of its history, Berkshire Hathaway has been regarded primarily as the investment vehicle of Warren Buffett rather than a bona fide corporation. However, as Berkshire Hathaway has expanded beyond its core insurance operations, more…

No abstract available.

We examine the impact of Chinese import competition on broad measures of technical change—patenting, IT, and TFP—using new panel data across twelve European countries from 1996 to 2007. In particular, we establish that the absolute…

A recurring theme in sociological research is the tradeoff between fitting in and standing out. Prior work examining this tension has tended to take either a network structural or a cultural perspective. We instead fuse these two traditions to…