We examine the effect of MiFID II, which mandated the unbundling and separate pricing of analyst research in Europe beginning in 2018. We find that the requirements of MiFID II were associated with a reduction in analyst following for European firms relative to US firms, with decreases in coverage greatest for firms that were larger, older and less volatile, and had greater coverage and more accurate consensus forecasts. Remaining analysts follow fewer firms and issue fewer forecasts, consistent with increased focus, and appear to increase their efforts on the firms they continue to cover.
Does the availability of health insurance for young adults affect entrepreneurial behavior? This paper proposes that policy effects may go beyond the binary, and shape choices around entrepreneurial form, such as incorporation. I use the adoption of 38 dependent coverage mandates in 31 states, passed from 1986 to 2013, and the adoption of a federal mandate in 2010 to analyze the relationship between non-employer provided insurance and entrepreneurial activity.
We investigate tax planning by privately-held corporations. Privately-held firms are commonly believed to face lower costs of tax planning relative to publicly-held firms, and thus are believed to engage in greater tax planning.
Why do young firms pay less? Using confidential microdata from the US Census Bureau, we find lower earnings among workers at young firms. However, we argue that such measurement is likely subject to worker and firm selection. Exploiting the two-sided panel nature of the data to control for relevant dimensions of worker and firm heterogeneity, we uncover a positive and significant young-firm pay premium. Furthermore, we show that worker selection at firm birth is related to future firm dynamics, including survival and growth. We tie our empirical findings to a simple model of pay, employment, and dynamics of young firms.
This article investigates patent citations made to published patent applications. Although citations to patent publications are conceptually indistinguishable from citations to granted patents, they are omitted from all standard measures. We find that publication citations are a large and growing portion of patent citations, and that they differ statistically from citations to granted patents on several important dimensions. We conclude that omitting publication citations is likely to generate biased measures, and that standard measures of patent citations should be corrected. We release our computer code and corrections for future use.
We investigate the extent to which loan officers generate individual effects on the design and performance of syndicated loan deals. We construct a novel database containing the identities of 6,821 loan officers involved in structuring syndicated loan deals. This data allow us to exploit movement of loan officers across banks to disentangle loan officer effects from bank fixed effects and estimate loan officers’ influence on both lending terms and loan performance. We find that loan officers have a significant influence on loan terms and loan performance that is incremental to bank and borrower characteristics.
We examine how product market competition affects the disclosure of innovation. Theory posits that product market competition can cause firms to increase their disclosure of innovation to deter competitors. Consistent with this reasoning, we find that patent applicants in more competitive industries voluntarily accelerate their patent disclosures, which are credibly disclosed via the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
After years of decline, increases in American youth tobacco usage have pushed the tobacco control debate back into the forefront of the public health conversation. Youth tobacco use increased from 2011 to 2018, largely driven by e-cigarette usage, which grew from 1.5% to 20.8% of American high school students, representing an increase of 2.83 million adolescents. Despite extensive evidence that e-cigarette chemicals cause morbidity including immediate, harmful changes in endothelial function in healthy nonsmokers, 72% of teenage e-cigarettes users believe e-cigarettes cause some, little, or no harm.
Kenan Institute Executive Director and Institute for Private Capital Research Director Greg Brown gets the last word in this Bloomberg Businessweek article on the ubiquity of private equity.
We find striking differences across economic states in how monthly and quarterly stock returns are related to changes in inflation expectations.
Access challenges associated with high-cost pharmaceuticals have jump started discussion of solutions ranging from state-based boards reviewing drug price increases to harnessing Medicare’s purchasing power for “price negotiation” to old-fashioned price-setting.
This paper presents an easy-to-use measure of patent scope that is grounded both in patent law and in the practices of patent attorneys. We validate our measure by showing both that patent attorneys’ subjective assessments of scope agree with our estimates, and that the behavior of patenters is consistent with it.
As firms mature, their founders are often replaced with seasoned executives. When founders are retained, the surrounding top management team (TMT) members are viewed as critical resources in helping compensate for the founder's managerial deficiencies. Surprisingly, however, little is known about how TMT members affect a founder‐led firm's performance later in a firm's life.
We utilize the time period over which banking authorities discussed, adopted, and implemented Basel III to examine the financial reporting and operational decisions firms use to respond to proposed regulation. Our primary finding is that the banks affected by this proposal made strategic financial reporting changes and altered their business models prior to the regulation being enacted.
Following 2 decades of discussion, the border adjustment tax (BAT) briefly emerged as part of proposed US corporate tax reform in early 2017. While heavily debated, little empirical evidence exists regarding the BAT. We take advantage of the period during which the BAT was under strong consideration to examine its effects on shareholder value.
Pump-and-dump schemes (P&Ds) are pervasive in the cryptocurrency market. We find that P&Ds lead to short-term bubbles featuring dramatic increases in prices, volume, and volatility. Prices peak within minutes and quick reversals follow. The evidence we document, including price run-ups before P&Ds start, implies significant wealth transfers between insiders and outsiders.
A central idea in the feedback seeking literature is that there should be a positive relationship between self-efficacy and the likelihood of seeking feedback. Yet empirical findings have not always matched this theoretical claim. Departing from current theorizing, we argue that high self-efficacy may sometimes decrease feedback seeking by making people undervalue feedback and that perspective taking is an important factor in determining whether or not this occurs.
We examine how firms’ accounting quality affects their reaction to monetary policy. The balance sheet channel of monetary policy predicts that the quality of firms’ accounting reports plays a role in transmitting monetary policy by affecting information asymmetries between firms and capital providers.