We propose a theory of banking in which banks cannot perfectly control deposit flows. Facing uninsurable loan and deposit shocks, banks dynamically manage lending, wholesale funding, deposits, and equity. Deposits create value by lowering funding costs. However, when the bank is undercapitalized and at risk of breaching leverage requirements, the marginal value of deposits can turn negative as deposit inflows, by raising leverage, increase the likelihood of costly equity issuance. Banks' inability to fully control leverage distinguishes them from nondepository intermediaries. Our model suggests a reevaluation of leverage regulations and offers new perspectives on banking in a low‐interest‐rate environment.

Theory posits that when managers anticipate excess capacity, average q becomes a biased estimator of marginal q as the potential for underutilizing new capital reduces the marginal benefit of investing. After correcting for this source of measurement error, the explanatory power of Tobin's q substantially improves in time‐series and cross‐sectional regressions as well as in out‐of‐sample tests. These findings, together with a secular erosion in capacity utilization, help explain why corporate investment rates have been declining for decades despite average q increasing significantly. Our analysis indicates that economic rigidities have contributed to the persistent erosion in capacity utilization.

We compare execution quality of six brokerage accounts across five brokers by generating a sample of 85,000 simultaneous market orders. Commission levels and payment for order flow (PFOF) differ across our accounts. We find that execution prices vary significantly across brokers: the mean account‐level round‐trip cost ranges from 0.07% to 0.46%, excluding any commissions. The dispersion is due to off‐exchange wholesalers systematically giving different execution prices for the same trades to different brokers. Across brokers, variation in PFOF does not explain the large variation in price execution. We provide several suggestions for more informative disclosures on execution quality.

We analyze how a profit‐maximizing proxy advisor designs vote recommendations and research reports. The advisor benefits from producing informative, unbiased reports, but only partially informative recommendations, biased against the a priori likely alternative. Such recommendations induce close votes, increasing controversy and thereby the relevance and value of proxy advice. Our results suggest shifting from an exclusive emphasis on recommendations, highlighting the importance of both reports and recommendations in proxy advisors' information provision. They rationalize the one‐size‐fits‐all approach and help reinterpret empirical patterns of voting behavior, suggesting that proxy advisors' recommendations may not be a suitable benchmark for evaluating shareholders' votes.

We study the impact of an MBA‐style executive education course in finance on corporate policies and firm performance targeting top managers of medium and large Mozambican enterprises. Using a randomized controlled trial, we find that the educational treatment induces changes in financial policies that improve firm performance. Specifically, a reduction in working capital (0.4 to 0.5 standard deviations) increases cash flow, and in turn long‐term investments. This effect operates primarily through a reduction in accounts receivable (0.4 to 1 standard deviations). Our findings show that targeted educational interventions can build managerial capital and enhance corporate performance by improving financial decision making among executives.

The paper examines the decision‐making, compensation, and turnover of female CEOs in U.S. hospitals. Contrary to the literature on lower‐ranked executives and directors in public firms, there is no evidence that gender differences in preferences for risk or altruism affect decision‐making of hospital CEOs: corporate policies do not shift when women take (or leave) office, and male and female CEOs respond similarly to a major financial shock. However, female CEOs earn lower salaries, face flatter pay‐for‐performance incentives, and exhibit greater turnover after poor performance. Hospital boards behave as though they perceive female CEOs as less productive.

The aggregate leverage of broker‐dealers responds to demand and supply disturbances that have opposite effects on financial markets. Specifically, leverage supply shocks that relax broker‐dealers' funding constraints increase leverage, liquidity, and returns and carry a positive price of risk, while leverage demand shocks also increase leverage but reduce liquidity and returns and carry a negative price of risk. Disentangling demand‐ and supply‐like shocks resolves existing puzzles around the price of leverage risk and yields consistent evidence across many markets of a central role for intermediation frictions and dealers' aggregate leverage in asset pricing.