Knowledge that Transforms

We show that investors extrapolate from recent stock returns of locally headquartered firms when forming beliefs about aggregate stock market outcomes. While it may be optimal to rely on local information, these effects are unrelated to how informative local returns are on predictions of aggregate outcomes. Evidence from a sample of retail investors suggests this belief extrapolation is driven by investors’ own holdings of local firms. Our findings suggest that beliefs about information contained in public signals vary systematically with geography, and are an important component of local biases in equity markets.

We develop a model of data-driven competition in which product quality depends on users’ data contributions and firms’ investments in data infrastructure. Users’ inability to internalize the value generated by their data, together with firms’ strategic investment incentives, can lead to data underinvestment—limiting quality—or overinvestment—concentrating market power. We introduce a data union that coordinates users’ contributions and can be implemented through a data trust or intermediary that aggregates user data. By shaping data compensation, the union enables users to capture and internalize more of their data’s value, enhancing user welfare, especially when combined with data sharing among firms. We apply these insights to financial data, digital payments, and Open Finance. Our analysis shows that data portability can strengthen competition but, without coordination, may leave data investment too low or excessive.

Startups face a trade-off between short-term profitability and long-term growth. Their cash flows are said to follow a so-called J-curve. The shape of the curve depends on investors’ financing capacity: their ability to sustain prolonged periods of negative cash flow. US venture capitalists are often believed to have greater financing capacity. We examine a large Swedish dataset with detailed cash flow information. Swedish startups backed by US venture capitalists experience deeper J-curves, with larger short-term losses and higher long-term sales, relative to those backed by non-US venture capitalists. These results are consistent with US venture capitalists having greater financing capacity: they can provide more funding directly and have better access to later-stage investors.

In credit markets where borrower types are observable, is it welfare-maximizing for a rate-setting institution to offer different rates to different borrower types, or to pool them at a common rate? Moral hazard favours separation; deadweight default costs favour pooling, since compressing rates reduces aggregate defaults through hazard rate heterogeneity. We derive the condition determining which force dominates: the ratio of default cost intensity to moral hazard intensity. We show that there is a single threshold value of this ratio such that separation strictly dominates below it, complete pooling strictly dominates above it, and the two are welfare-equivalent exactly at it, for every possible value of the ratio. The result does not depend on information being scarce: even though borrower types are observable throughout, pooling can still dominate separation when default costs are sufficiently large, provided the maintained compression and effort conditions we state precisely continue to hold; we conjecture, but do not formally establish, that the same logic extends to imperfect information if the threshold, recomputed for that weaker information structure, continues to be exceeded. The welfare criterion is utilitarian surplus; the efficiency claim is surplus maximisation, not Pareto improvement.

Using transaction data from a U.S. account aggregator, I study how household balance-sheet conditions drive within-person variation in marginal propensities to consume, repay debt, and invest across three rounds of pandemic stimulus. Using a machine learning imputation estimator, I measure the sensitivity of responses to time-varying financial circumstances. Spending responses fall as liquid assets increase, while debt repayments crowd out consumption only for those with binding borrowing limits. Transfers also encourage retail investment in stocks and cryptocurrencies at both intensive and extensive margins. The findings show how liquidity constraints and debt overhang influence the allocation of transfers across spending, deleveraging, and financial assets.

We study how fatal and nonfatal health shocks affect households’ ability to meet their financial obligations. We find that fatal shocks substantially increase the likelihood of default and that housing wealth plays a key role as a self-insurance mechanism. Surviving spouses who experience the largest income losses are more likely to sell their homes, and those without housing wealth face a sharply higher risk of debt collection. In the most financially vulnerable families, these shocks even generate intergenerational spillovers. In contrast, nonfatal health shocks lead to only modest increases in default risk. Taken together, our findings suggest that strengthening survivors’ benefits for households with limited resources could improve welfare across generations.

This paper documents a non-monotonic impact of local mutual funds on the pricing of municipal bond issuance. Offering yield spreads are higher in states where municipal bond funds’ headquarters are located, and in states with larger aggregate local fund size. However, controlling for local fund size, yield spreads decrease as the number of local fund families increases. These findings are consistent with a security pricing model with multiple imperfectly informed investors and with the empirical evidence supporting local funds’ informational advantage. Specifically, mutual fund trades predict local bonds’ credit rating changes.

We exploit unexpected corporate data breaches to study the loss and repair of corporate reputation. Reputation loss decreases equity and brand values, increases customer churn, and prompts more negative media coverage. Firms repair their reputation by increasing their charitable donations and have CSR scores that are more than 0.5 standard deviations higher. They increase political contributions, employee wages, and IT investment. These actions are targeted to stakeholders that are particularly important or in situations that are particularly salient to their stakeholders. We observe similar dynamics of reputation loss and repair following the release of negative news about firms’ social behaviors.

We provide novel evidence on the role of firms’ banking relationships with government banks (GOBs) during a climate-related shock when relief funds are unavailable. Using variation in the locations of rainfall shocks and firms’ banking relationships, we find that firms maintaining exclusive banking relationships with GOBs (GOB firms) secure more debt relative to other firms during rainfall shocks. We do not find such effects for firms that maintain exclusive relationships with private banks, foreign banks, or maintain multiple banking relationships. We also find that GOB relationships are particularly beneficial for firms that are more vulnerable to rainfall shocks, have long-term relationships with GOBs, and are, at the same time, healthier compared to other firms. With regard to real effects, GOB firms invest more and remain profitable than other firms during rainfall shocks. Overall, our results highlight the benefits of GOB relationships for firms during climate shocks.

We study the impact of ring-fencing on bank riskiness using short-term money markets. Ring-fencing is when the government restricts some banking activities to a subsidiary of the group whilst restricting intra-group transfers. Exploiting confidential data on sterling-denominated repo transactions, we document that banking groups subject to ring-fencing are perceived to be safer—repo investors lend to ring-fenced groups at lower rates—and that the safety perception is amplified during times of market stress. We show that ring-fenced groups also intermediate more cautiously. Our article suggests that structural reforms can create a “safe-haven” bank in the financial system.