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I ask whether hedgers who speculate should be regulated differently from other speculators in a model where information acquisition is endogenous, and information has real effects. Hedging benefits and feedback effects generate strategic complementarities between market-maker, firm manager, and trader, which causes multiple equilibria. Gains from trade are lower when hedgers acquire information, while speculators may produce less information than socially desirable. A “Volcker rule” separating hedging and speculative activities may help select the higher welfare equilibrium. When too little information is produced, contracts whereby a firm subsidizes losses of designated market-makers (DMM) to make prices more informative increase welfare

We study whether information design influences consumer behavior in a randomized field experiment with users of an online account aggregation app. Participants received a personalized index representing their net worth as a lifetime monthly cash flow. The presentation of this index varied across treatments in its framing and the salience of its display. Consumers exposed to a consumption-oriented frame and a salient comparison of the index with their past spending reduced discretionary spending. These findings show that minor variations in information presentation can significantly affect financial behavior, highlighting the power of design in promoting saving and informing policy and regulation

This study examines the impact of recreational marijuana laws (RMLs) on firm-level employment using an imputation-based difference-in-differences (DiD) approach across U.S. states. RMLs significantly reduce employment, particularly among firms with high-skilled labor, strong union presence, permissive corporate cultures, and in states with greater dispensary density. Alternative explanations—including economic crises, COVID-19, fiscal changes, labor regulations, and related policies such as smoking bans and right-to-work (RTW) laws—are systematically ruled out through a series of placebo and robustness tests. RMLs also reduce investment, sales growth, and innovation, suggesting that legalization introduces labor-related frictions with broad implications for firm performance and long-term dynamism