The content of climate change disclosures of large, global companies evolved from 2007 to 2016. Within that window, the same set of firms started measuring and disclosing their supply chain carbon emissions. Does carbon footprinting influence the nature and content of a firm's disclosure on the climate change risks that are expected to affect its business? We explore this question using more than 10,925 climate change disclosures collected by the CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project) from 2,003 firms worldwide. We use singular value decomposition and text similarity scores to quantitatively examine the content of the CDP disclosures from 2007 to 2016. Using fixed effects and dynamic panel models, we find that measuring supply chain carbon emissions (Scope 3) explains a substantial shift in the content and nature of the disclosures. We find no evidence that measuring and disclosing direct emissions (Scope 1) are associated with substantial changes in the content of the disclosures. One explanation for this is that most of the climate change‐related risks are in the supply chain, not within the company boundaries of large, global firms. Our results show the importance of encouraging firms to voluntarily measure their supply chain carbon emissions if they are not yet aware of their contribution and exposure to climate change. Our work shows that firms’ response to climate change is dynamic, and it may take a decade to detect these shifts.

Abstract We introduce a parsimonious framework for choosing among alternative expected-return proxies (ERPs) when estimating treatment effects. By comparing ERPs’ measurement error variances in the cross-section and in the time series, we provide new evidence on the relative performance of firm-level ERPs nominated by recent studies. Generally, “implied-costs-of-capital” metrics perform best in the time series, whereas “characteristic-based” proxies perform best in the cross-section. Factor-based ERPs, even the latest renditions, perform poorly. We revisit four prior studies that use ex ante ERPs and illustrate how this framework can potentially alter either the sign or the magnitude of prior inferences.

In a 2014 paper, Garthwaite, Gross, and Notowidigdo examined the employment impact of the 2005 TennCare contraction. We extend their approach in several directions. First, we use consistent Conley-Taber estimation. Second, we transform their estimates to make them comparable to previous work; the transformed effects have large confidence intervals. We estimate their models using several larger data sets in an attempt to get more precise estimates but find that the results can be quite different. We consider two modifications to account for a major disruption to coverage in 2002, and one of these reduces the differences in the results.

Abstract We explore the interplay between trade-invoicing patterns and the pricing of safe assets in different currencies. Our theory highlights the following points: (i) a currency’s role as a unit of account for invoicing decisions is complementary to its role as a safe store of value; (ii) this complementarity can lead to the emergence of a single dominant currency in trade invoicing and global banking, even when multiple large candidate countries share similar economic fundamentals; (iii) firms in emerging-market countries endogenously take on currency mismatches by borrowing in the dominant currency; and (iv) the expected return on dominant-currency safe assets is lower than that on similarly safe assets denominated in other currencies, thereby bestowing an “exorbitant privilege” on the dominant currency. The theory thus provides a unified explanation for why a dominant currency is so heavily used in both trade invoicing and in global finance.

Organizations are increasingly designing workplaces that offer employees opportunities to incorporate nature into their professional lives. Despite the extensive study of work design, the scope and effects of employees’ contact with nature have rarely been considered as a meaningful element of the work context. This is an important oversight, given the significance of the biophilia hypothesis, which proposes that humans have an innate desire to connect with nature, and research showing that individuals benefit from contact with nature. Moreover, prior research has largely focused on the positive effects of nature on individuals, and it is unclear whether these effects will remain positive in organizational settings, or whether biophilia at work can sometimes have negative implications. In this paper, we draw on the biophilic design literature to identify contextual characteristics of work design that influence the extent to which employees have contact with nature while on the job. In addition, we describe how contact with nature affects employees’ cognitive, emotional, prosocial, and physical reserves of energy. Finally, we explain how the effects of biophilic work design on employees’ potential energy is enhanced, reduced, or even reversed by situational and individual factors.

We assess the impact of the Eurosystem's Targeted Long-Term Refinancing Operations (TLTROs) on the lending policies of euro area banks. We first build a theoretical model in which banks compete in the credit and deposit markets. We distinguish between direct and indirect effects. Direct effects take place because bidding banks expand their loan supply due to the lower marginal costs implied by the TLTROs. Indirect effects on non-bidders operate via changes in the competitive environment in banks’ credit and deposit markets. We then test these predictions with a sample of 130 banks from 13 countries. Regarding direct effects, we find an easing impact on margins on loans to relatively safe borrowers, but no impact on credit standards. Regarding indirect effects, there is a positive impact on the loan supply on non-bidders but, contrary to the direct effects, the transmission of the TLTROs takes place through an easing of credit standards.

In this paper, I provide some observations on how the academic field of operations management has changed over the past 40 years. For this purpose, I have identified and classified the operations management (OM) papers published in Management Science in 1976 and in 2016. From this review, I comment on what’s changed, what’s new, and what we might see in the future. In reflecting on these changes, I also document and discuss how the OM editorial structure and mission have evolved at Management Science over this time. This paper was accepted by David Simchi-Levi, Special Section of Management Science: 65th Anniversary.

Despite a recent surge in corporate activism, with firm leaders communicating about social-political issues unrelated to their core businesses, we know little about its strategic implications. This paper examines the effect of an employer communicating a stance about a social-political issue on employee motivation, using a two-phase, preregistered field experiment in an online labor market platform. Results demonstrate an asymmetric treatment effect of taking a stance depending on whether the employee agrees or disagrees with that stance. Namely, I observe a demotivating effect of taking a stance on a social-political issue with which employees disagree and no statistically significant motivating effect of taking a stance on a social-political issue with which employees agree. This study has important implications for the nascent scholarship on corporate activism, as well as the scholarship on strategic human capital management. This paper was accepted by Greta Hsu, organizations.