Publications

How do Americans organize their political beliefs? This paper argues that party polarization and the growing prominence of moral issues in recent decades have catalyzed different responses by different groups of Americans. The paper investigates…

We develop a model of experimentation and learning in policymaking when control of power is temporary. We demonstrate how an early office holder who would otherwise not experiment is nonetheless induced to experiment when his hold on power is…

How do firms repair their reputations after a serious accounting restatement? To answer this question, we review firms’ press releases and identify 1,765 reputation-building actions taken by: (i) 94 restating firms in the periods before and after…

We examine variation in the rate of divestment by multinational firms from Burma. We argue that in addition to a set of firm-level characteristics known to impact divestment decisions, firms are also influenced by characteristics of their home…

This paper traces career transitions of federal and state U.S. banking regulators from a large sample of publicly available curricula vitae, and provides basic facts on worker flows between the regulatory and private sector resulting from the…

Over the past three decades, the earnings of workers with a college education have substantially increased relative to those with less education. In 1980, the average college graduate earned 38% more than the average high school graduate. By 2000…

We review research on revenue models used by online firms who offer digital goods. Such goods are non-rival, have near zero marginal cost of production and distribution, low marginal cost of consumer search, and low transaction costs.…

Forthcoming in the Journal of Law and Economics.

This paper examines changes in executive compensation programs made by firms in response to proxy advisory firm say-on-pay voting policies. Using proprietary models, proxy advisory…

Organization theory highlights the spread of norms of rationality in contemporary life. Yet rationality does not always spread without friction; individuals often act based on other beliefs and norms. We explore this problem in the context of…

Organization theory highlights the spread of norms of rationality in contemporary life. Yet rationality does not always spread without friction; individuals often act based on other beliefs and norms. We explore this problem in the context of…

This paper discusses some of the challenges faced by a policy treatment of speculative trading that is motivated by differences in beliefs. The first challenge is philosophical. Suppose two investors prefer to speculate with each other, under the…

In March 2013, LululemonAthletica removed its inventory of women’s black yoga pants from its stores because recent shipments of the product were “too sheer.”

For a company reliant on a reputation for…

The Conceptual Framework neither specifies the objective or definition of accounting measurement, nor provides a conceptual basis for choosing among alternative measurement bases. This paper offers a starting point for developing measurement…

This paper quantifies how variation in economic activity and inflation in the United States influences the market prices of level, slope, and curvature risks in Treasury markets. We develop a novel arbitrage-free dynamic term structure…

This paper analyzes the institutional framework that has historically governed the cost-benefit analysis (CBA) of financial regulation. Although U.S. financial regulators are often portrayed as being immune from CBA, the paper shows how each…

Drawing on a large sample of publicly available curricula vitae, this paper traces the career transitions of federal and state U.S. banking regulators and provides basic facts on worker flows between the regulatory and private sectors resulting…

Many companies have made significant investments in socially responsible production practices for their products. Environmentally safe cleaning products, fair trade coffee, and sustainable seafood are just a few examples. In this paper, we…

Depression is typically diagnosed as being present or absent. However, depression severity is believed to be continuously distributed rather than dichotomous. Severity may vary for a given patient daily and seasonally as a function of many…