We study how relationship lending determines the financing of innovation. Exploiting a negative shock to relationships, we show that it reduces the number of innovative firms, especially those that depend more on relationship lending such as small, opaque firms. This credit supply shock leads to reallocation of inventors whereby young and productive inventors leave small firms and move out of geographical areas where lending relationships are hurt. Overall, our results show that credit markets affect both the level of innovation activity and the distribution of innovative human capital across the economy.Received April 11, 2013; editorial decision May 25, 2016 by Editor Andrew Karolyi.

We study how relationship lending determines the financing of innovation. Exploiting a negative shock to relationships, we show that it reduces the number of innovative firms, especially those that depend more on relationship lending such as small, opaque firms. This credit supply shock leads to reallocation of inventors whereby young and productive inventors leave small firms and move out of geographical areas where lending relationships are hurt. Overall, our results show that credit markets affect both the level of innovation activity and the distribution of innovative human capital across the economy.

ABSTRACT We study whether R&D‐intensive firms are more resilient to trade shocks. We correct for the endogeneity of R&D using tax‐induced changes to R&D costs. While rising imports from China lead to slower sales growth and lower profitability, these effects are significantly smaller for firms with a larger stock of R&D (about half when moving from the bottom quartile to the top quartile of R&D). We provide evidence that this effect is explained by R&D allowing firms to increase product differentiation. As a result, while firms in import‐competing industries cut capital expenditures and employment, R&D‐intensive firms downsize considerably less.

Limits to arbitrage arise because financial intermediaries may face funding constraints when mispricing worsens. Using a model with limits to arbitrage, where we allow arbitrageurs to secure capital even in case of underperformance, we show that arbitrageurs that are more protected from withdrawals have more mean-reverting and volatile returns. Using data on hedge fund performance, we find robust support for these hypotheses: Funds with contractual impediments to withdrawals, and funds with performance-insensitive outflows, recover more quickly after a bad year and have more volatile returns. Our evidence is consistent with the idea that some hedge funds overcome the limits to arbitrage.

Abstract We study how retail savings products can share market risk across investor cohorts, thereby completing financial markets. Financial intermediaries smooth returns by varying reserves, which are passed on between successive investor cohorts, thereby redistributing wealth across cohorts. Using data on euro contracts sold by life insurers in France, we estimate this redistribution to be large: 0.8% of GDP. We develop and provide evidence for a model in which low investor sophistication, while leading to individually suboptimal decisions, improves risk sharing by allowing intercohort risk sharing. Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online.

ABSTRACT We compare the optimal trading strategy of an informed speculator when he can trade ahead of incoming news (is “fast”), versus when he cannot (is “slow”). We find that speed matters: the fast speculator's trades account for a larger fraction of trading volume, and are more correlated with short‐run price changes. Nevertheless, he realizes a large fraction of his profits from trading on long‐term price changes. The fast speculator's behavior matches evidence about high‐frequency traders. We predict that stocks with more informative news are more liquid even though they attract more activity from informed high‐frequency traders.

Incentive problems make securities’ payoffs imperfectly pledgeable, limiting agents’ ability to issue liabilities. We analyze the equilibrium consequences of such endogenous incompleteness in a dynamic exchange economy. Because markets are endogenously incomplete, agents have different intertemporal marginal rates of substitution, so that they value assets differently. Consequently, agents hold different portfolios. This leads to endogenous markets segmentation, which we characterize with optimal transport methods. Moreover, there is a basis going always in the same direction: the price of a security is lower than that of replicating portfolios of long positions. Finally, equilibrium expected returns are concave in factor loadings. (JEL D51, D52, G11, G12)

ABSTRACT We evaluate the effect of downside insurance on self‐employment. We exploit a large‐scale reform of French unemployment benefits that insured unemployed workers starting businesses. The reform significantly increased firm creation without decreasing the quality of new entrants. Firms started postreform were initially smaller, but their employment growth, productivity, and survival rates are similar to those prereform. New entrepreneurs' characteristics and expectations are also similar. Finally, jobs created by new entrants crowd out employment in incumbent firms almost one‐for‐one, but have a higher productivity than incumbents. These results highlight the benefits of encouraging experimentation by lowering barriers to entry.

We study the effect of a merger between two large banks on credit market competition. We identify the competitive effect of the merger using matched loan-level and firm-level data and exploiting variation in the merging banks’ market overlap across local lending markets. On the credit market side, we find a reduction in lending, in particular through termination of relationships. In the average market, bank credit decreases by 2.7%. On the real side, firm exit increases by 4%, whereas firms that do not exit and firms that start up experience no adverse real effect on investment and employment.