Using individual patient records for every hospital in California from 1983 to 2011, we find a strong inverse link between daily stock returns and hospital admissions, particularly for psychological conditions such as anxiety, panic disorder, and major depression. The effect is nearly instantaneous (within the same day) for psychological conditions, suggesting that anticipation over future consumption directly influences instantaneous utility.

We use exogenous scheduling of Wall Street Journal columnists to identify a causal relation between financial reporting and stock market performance. To measure the media's unconditional effect, we add columnist fixed effects to a daily regression of excess Dow Jones Industrial Average returns. Relative to standard control variables, these fixed effects increase the R-super-2 by about 35%, indicating each columnist's average persistent "bullishness" or "bearishness." To measure the media's conditional effect, we interact columnist fixed effects with lagged returns. This increases explanatory power by yet another one-third, and identifies amplification or attenuation of prevailing sentiment as a tool used by financial journalists. The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for Financial Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: [email protected]., Oxford University Press.

Disentangling the causal impact of media reporting from the impact of the events being reported is challenging. We solve this problem by comparing the behaviors of investors with access to different media coverage of the same information event. We use zip codes to identify 19 mutually exclusive trading regions corresponding with large U.S. cities. For all earnings announcements of S&P 500 Index firms, we find that local media coverage strongly predicts local trading, after controlling for earnings, investor, and newspaper characteristics. Moreover, local trading is strongly related to the timing of local reporting, a particular challenge to nonmedia explanations.

We find that a corrupt local environment amplifies the effects of financial distress. Following regional spikes in financial misconduct, credit becomes more difficult to obtain for local borrowers—even those not implicated themselves. This is particularly harmful for cash-constrained firms, which cut investment more sharply and lay off more workers during industry downturns. We also find that local clustering of financial misconduct is a risk factor for bankruptcy.

Using detailed publication and citation data for over 50,000 articles from 30 major economics and finance journals, we investigate whether network proximity to an editor influences research productivity. During an editor's tenure, his current university colleagues publish about 100% more papers in the editor's journal, compared to years when he is not editor. In contrast to editorial nepotism, such “inside” articles have significantly higher ex post citation counts, even when same-journal and self-cites are excluded. Our results thus suggest that despite potential conflicts of interest faced by editors, personal associations are used to improve selection decisions.

When banks and firms are connected through interpersonal linkages – such as their respective management having attended college or previously worked together – interest rates are markedly reduced, comparable with single shifts in credit ratings. These rate concessions do not appear to reflect sweetheart deals. Subsequent firm performance, such as future credit ratings or stock returns, improves following a connected deal, suggesting that social networks lead to either better information flow or better monitoring.

Recent studies conflict sharply about the stock returns of financially distressed firms. Both the basic empirical pattern and interpretation have been challenged. This study addresses both critiques. Analyzing about 4.3 million firm-months observations in 38 countries from January 1992 to June 2013, we find a strong, negative link between credit risk and subsequent equity returns, concentrated among low-capitalization stocks in developed countries in North America and Europe. Comparisons between countries reveal: 1) no relation to creditor rights, inconsistent with theories based on shareholders expropriation, but 2) a strong, positive relation to individualism, a proxy for investor overconfidence. Additional analysis using within-country proxies for investor overconfidence further supports an overconfidence-based explanation.

CEOs with large networks earn more than those with small networks. An additional connection to an executive or director outside the firm increases compensation by about $17,000 on average, more so for "important" members, such as CEOs of big firms. Pay-for-connectivity is unrelated to several measures of corporate governance, evidence in favor of an efficient contracting explanation for CEO pay.

We find that a firm's investment is highly sensitive to the investments of other firms headquartered nearby, even those in very different industries. A firm's investment also responds to fluctuations in the cash flows and stock prices ( q ) of local firms outside its sector. These patterns do not appear to reflect exogenous area shocks such as local shocks to labor or real estate values, but rather suggest that local agglomeration economies are important determinants of firm investment and growth.

Historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) pay higher underwriting fees to issue tax-exempt bonds, compared with similar non-HBCUs, apparently reflecting higher costs of finding willing buyers. The effect is three times larger in the Deep South, where racial animus remains the most severe. Credit quality plays little role. For example, identical differences are observed between HBCU and non-HBCUs with AAA ratings or when insured by the same company, even before the 2007–2009 financial crisis. HBCU-issued bonds are also more expensive to trade in secondary markets and, when they do, sit in dealer inventory longer.