We study the role of financial strength on product market competition by examining exogenous shocks to a firm’s liability structure arising from asbestos litigation. We find that exogenous increases (decreases) in asbestos liabilities are interpreted by the market as negative (positive) news for a firm’s close competitors. These reactions are magnified in events in which one asbestos-tainted firm goes bankrupt and other asbestos-tainted stocks fall on the news of the bankruptcy. For smaller competitors, market reactions are more pronounced in more concentrated industries. Our findings support the general hypothesis that increases in fixed liabilities lead to more aggressive product market interactions.

We investigate the strict-exogeneity assumption, a necessary condition for estimator consistency in many finance panel-data applications. We outline tests for strict exogeneity in both traditional (non–instrumental variable (IV)) and IV settings. When we apply these tests in common traditional finance panel regressions, we find that the strict-exogeneity assumption is often strongly rejected, suggesting large inference errors. We test for strict exogeneity in specific finance panel-data IV settings and illustrate the potential for these tests to help confirm, or rule out, the validity of common panel-data IV estimators. We offer recommendations to address the strict-exogeneity issue in finance research.

We find that division managers who are connected to the CEO are substantially less likely than others to depart from the firm and are more likely to be promoted. Connected managers are protected when performance is poor, and they display no special ability to improve performance given this protection. Connections matter more in weak governance/incentive environments, and the external labor market and stock market appear skeptical of connected managers’ talents. While much of the evidence suggests inefficient favoritism, connected managers are protected more in peripheral segments, suggesting a possible efficiency benefit in helping to resolve intrafirm information problems.