These papers are working drafts of research which often appear in final form in academic journals. The published versions may differ from the working versions provided here.
SSRN Research Paper Series
The Social Science Research Network’s Research Paper Series includes working papers produced by Stanford GSB the Rock Center.
You may search for authors and topics and download copies of the work there.
Where’s the Greenium?
This study investigates whether investors are willing to trade-off wealth for societal benefits. We take advantage of unique institutional features of the municipal securities market to provide insight into this question. Since 2013, over $23…
Estimating Treatment Effects with Causal Forests: An Application
We apply causal forests to a dataset derived from the National Study of Learning Mindsets, and consider resulting practical and conceptual challenges. In particular, we discuss how causal forests use estimated propensity scores to be more…
Peer Group Choice and Chief Executive Officer Compensation
We examine the selection of peer groups that boards of directors use when setting the level of CEO compensation. This choice is controversial because it is difficult to ascertain whether peer groups are selected to (i) attract and retain top…
Made in the U.S.A.? A Study of Firm Responses to Domestic Production Incentives
How do U.S. companies respond to incentives intended to encourage domestic manufacturing? I study the Domestic Production Activities Deduction (DPAD), which was enacted in the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 and was the third largest U.S.…
Net Operating Loss Carryforwards and Corporate Savings Policies
We examine the relation between tax net operating loss (NOL) carryforwards and corporate cash holdings. Corporate taxation of passive income increases the cost of holding liquid assets (“cash”), but NOLs can shield that income from tax. We test…
Synthetic Difference in Differences
We present a new perspective on the Synthetic Control (SC) method as a weighted least squares regression estimator with time fixed effects and unit weights. This perspective suggests a generalization with two way (both unit and time) fixed…
Transparency and Tax Evasion: Evidence from the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA)
We examine how U.S. individuals respond to regulation intended to reduce offshore tax evasion. Specifically, we study investment responses to the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), which requires foreign financial institutions to report…
Experienced Segregation
We introduce a novel measure of segregation, experienced isolation, that captures individuals’ exposure to diverse others in the places they visit over the course of their days. Using novel Global Positioning System (GPS) data collected…
The Roots of Health Inequality and the Value of Intra-Family Expertise
Do differences in health literacy contribute to the widely documented health-income gradient? In the context of Sweden, we document a strong relationship between exposure to health-related expertise — captured by the presence of a health…
Causally Driven Incremental Multi Touch Attribution Using a Recurrent Neural Network
This paper describes a practical system for Multi Touch Attribution (MTA) for use by a publisher of digital ads. We developed this system for JD.com, an eCommerce company, which is also a publisher of digital ads in China. The approach has…
Optimal Dynamic Information Acquisitioned
I study a dynamic model in which a decision-maker acquires information about the payoffs of different alternatives prior to making her decision. The key feature of the model is the flexibility of information: the decision-maker can choose any…
A Unified Model of Distress Risk Puzzles
We build a dynamic model to link two empirical patterns: the negative failure probability-return relation (Campbell, Hilscher, and Szilagyi, JF, 2008) and the positive distress risk premium-return relation (Friewald, Wagner, and Zechner, JF, 2014…
Capital Requirements, Risk Choice, and Liquidity Provision in a Business Cycle Model
Accepted at the Journal of Financial Economics
This paper develops a quantitative dynamic general equilibrium model in which households’ preferences for safe and liquid assets constitute a violation of Modigliani and Miller. I…
The Insurance is the Lemon: Failing to Index Contracts
We model the widespread failure of contracts to share risk using available indices. A borrower and lender can share risk by conditioning repayments on an index. The lender has private information about the ability of this index to measure the…
Non-Answers During Conference Calls
We construct a novel measure of disclosure choice by firms. Our measure uses linguistic analysis of conference calls to flag a manager’s response as providing an explicit “non-answer” to an analyst’s question. Using our measure, about 11% of…
Climate Change and Long-Run Discount Rates: Evidence From Real Estate
Revise and Resubmit at the Journal of Political Economy
We explore what private market data can tell us about the appropriate discount rates for valuing investments in climate change abatement. We estimate the term structure of…
Making Time Matter: A Review of Research on Time and Meaning
In this conceptual paper, we review three decades of research on time and meaning in consumer research and psychology to identify key themes that have emerged, build frameworks that integrate past research, and reveal areas of potential for…
Not All Debt is Created Equal: On the Mental Accounting of Debt Forms
Abstract coming soon.
The Effect of Payment Frequency on Spending Behavior
Abstract coming soon.
Scaling Up: The Implementation of Corporate Governance in Pre-IPO Companies
Companies are required to have a reliable system of corporate governance in place at the time of IPO in order to protect the interests of public company investors and stakeholders. Yet, relatively little is known about the process by which they…