Publications

Local stock markets adjust sluggishly to changes in local inflation. When the local rate of inflation increases, local investors subsequently earn lower real returns on local stocks, but not on local bonds or foreign stocks, suggesting that local…

Financial education programmes are sometimes dismissed by critics claiming ‘mixed evidence’ on their effectiveness. This column analyses a full set of available randomised controlled trials evaluating the causal impact of financial education…

Using a large sample of business groups from several countries around the world, we show that group information matters for parent and subsidiary default prediction. Group firms may support each other when in financial distress. Potential group…

Governments may extract rent from private citizens by inflating taxes and spending on projects benefiting special interests. Using a spatial equilibrium model, I show that less elastic housing supplies increase governments’ abilities to extract…

Three studies explored the effects of uncertainty on people’s time preferences for financial gains and losses. In general, individuals seek to avoid uncertainty in situations of intertemporal choice. While holding the expected value of payouts…

We provide an equilibrium analysis of the efficiency properties of bilateral tariff negotiations in a three-country, two-good general equilibrium model of international trade when transfers are not feasible. We consider “weak-rules” …

Preemptive strikes are costly and harmful. Existing models of defensive aggression focus narrowly on the role fear plays in motivating preemptive strikes. Theoretically integrating the literatures on conflict, decision making, and emotion, the…

In summer 2016, the Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University conducted a nationwide survey of 1,…

Previous theorists have characterized sexually aggressive behavior as an expression of power, yet evidence that power causes sexual aggression is mixed. We hypothesize that power can indeed create opportunities for sexual aggression—but that it…

Research has typically examined the link of activity patterns and affect among late middle-aged and older people, in the context of continuity and activity theory. The aim of this present research was to test continuity and activity theory among…

Our analytical description of how banks’ responses to asset price changes can result in procyclical leverage reveals that for banks with a binding regulatory leverage constraint, absent differences in regulatory risk weights across assets,…

The threat of free-riding makes the marshalling of cooperation from group members a fundamental challenge of social life. Where classical social science theory saw the enforcement of moral boundaries as a critical way by which group members…

This study examines the effect of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (JOBS Act) on information uncertainty in IPO firms. The JOBS Act creates a new category of issuer, the Emerging Growth Company (EGC), and exempts EGCs from several…

Background and objectives: Prior research suggests that altering situation-specific evaluations of stress as challenging versus threatening can improve responses to stress. The aim of the current study was to explore whether…

An emerging body of research consistently demonstrates that individuals in developed consumer markets value authenticity. But how individuals respond to organizations that tout their identities as authentic is not so well understood. We argue…

Empirical and survey evidence suggest that firms often manipulate reported numbers to avoid debt covenant violations. The theoretical literature, by and large, has ignored the consequences of this phenomenon on debt contracting. Departing from a…

Rural electrification rates in India lag behind government goals, in part due to the inability of distribution companies (discoms) to fund central grid expansion. In the absence of central grid electrification, mini-grids offer significant…

Whether people seek help depends on their estimations of both the likelihood and the value of getting it. Although past research has carefully examined how accurately help-seekers predict whether their help requests will be granted, it has failed…

A policy debate centers around the question whether news aggregators such as Google News decrease or increase traffic to online news sites. One side of the debate, typically espoused by publishers, views aggregators as substitutes for traditional…

Friends and spouses tend to be similar in a broad range of characteristics, such as age, educational level, race, religion, attitudes, and general intelligence. Surprisingly, little evidence has been found for similarity in personality—one of the…