We examine the relation between public firm presence and import competition. The information created by public firm presence may provide importers with insights they can use for competing with domestic firms. Consistent with this possibility, we document a positive relation between public firm presence and import competition. We find similar results when using differences in the expected costs of the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act as a source of plausibly exogenous variation in public firm presence after the act. We use differences in the proportion of German firms reporting publicly around a major enforcement reform as a natural mechanism experiment, and find evidence that financial reporting is a channel through which public firm presence relates to import competition. Additional mechanism tests and a falsification test estimated in the United Kingdom, where public and most private firms report publicly, further support this inference. In total, our evidence is consistent with foreign competitors using the information created by public firm presence, including what public firms disclose in financial reports, to compete with domestic firms. Consequently, our results provide evidence of competitors using the proprietary information disclosed in financial reports to compete with the disclosing firms and of information frictions affecting trade.

We investigate variation in information production by sell‐side analysts and its potential role in hedge fund activist intervention, an important external corporate governance mechanism that creates shareholder value. Using textual analysis to derive an activism dictionary from intervention objectives and tactics, we find substantially more activism content in pre‐intervention analyst reports of target firms than propensity score matched control firms. Activism content is associated with more detailed reports containing more quantitative information. Target firm intervention‐date stock returns are significantly higher when activist intention (13D) filings are supported by reports with more general and objective‐specific activism content. Of activists' public letters to stakeholders, 31.9% directly mention sell‐side analysis, amplifying the association between target returns and analyst report information. The relationship between analyst information and activism returns is robust to using brokerage closures as an exogenous shock and is consistent with analyst incentives. Activist funds with no prior disclosed position in target firms and more experienced funds capture higher returns from sell‐side information. Overall, our results suggest sell‐side analysts play a significant informational role in supporting hedge fund activism.

The SEC requires public companies to disclose material information on Form 8-K within four days of a triggering event. We show that on 8-K event and filing dates, there is significant abnormal attention on Bloomberg terminals, which are a source of information for institutional investors, while traditional media attention tends to be higher on filing days. Significant price discovery occurs on the event date and on the days between that day and the filing date. The traditional media coverage on the filing day appears to attract the attention of retail investors and leads to further price changes in the direction of the pre-filing day price change. Institutional investors exploit this price pressure via opportunistic liquidity provision. Overall, our evidence suggests that the Form 8-K filing may have little direct informational benefit, particularly to retail investors.

In this article, we examine whether comovement in the stock prices of pairs of Chinese firms connected to the same political network are systematically shaped by the prevailing coordination versus competition incentives of that network’s politicians. We find strong evidence from 2000 to 2012 (Jiang’s and Hu’s regimes) that stock price comovement is affected by the embeddedness of the firm–politician ties within the network. Among pairs of firms connected to a network through a common politician, we document an increase in stock price comovement. For those pairs of firms connected to a common network via separate politicians (rather than a common politician), we document a relative decrease in stock price comovement. This negative effect suggests that politicians’ relationships within these political networks are generally adversarial rather than cooperative in nature. These results become significantly weaker during Xi’s regime from 2013 to 2017, suggesting that Xi’s anti-corruption campaign and state-owned enterprise reforms may have attenuated these political network effects on the firms. Our additional tests also show that stock price comovement becomes even more positive (negative) in settings which are expected to increase the coordination or decrease the competition (decrease the coordination or increase the competition) of the politicians.

The Black Death was the largest demographic shock in European history. We review the evidence for the origins, spread, and mortality of the disease. We document that it was a plausibly exogenous shock to the European economy and trace out its aggregate and local impacts in both the short run and the long run. The initial effect of the plague was highly disruptive. Wages and per capita income rose. But, in the long run, this rise was only sustained in some parts of Europe. The other indirect long-run effects of the Black Death are associated with the growth of Europe relative to the rest of the world, especially Asia and the Middle East (the Great Divergence), a shift in the economic geography of Europe toward the northwest (the Little Divergence), the demise of serfdom in western Europe, a decline in the authority of religious institutions, and the emergence of stronger states. Finally, avenues for future research are laid out.

This paper aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of the potential conflicts between macroprudential and monetary policies within a DGSE model with financial frictions. The identification of conflicts is conditional on different types of shocks, policy instruments, and policy objectives. We first find that conflicts are not systematic but are fairly frequent, especially in the case of supply-side and widespread shocks such as investment efficiency and bank capital shocks. Second, monetary policy and countercyclical capital requirements generate conflicts in many circumstances. By affecting interest rates, they both “get in all the cracks”, albeit with their respective targets generally moving in opposite directions. Nonetheless, monetary policy could reduce its adverse financial side effects by responding strongly to the output gap. Third, countercyclical loan-to-value caps, as sector-specific instruments, cause fewer conflicts. Thus, they can be more easily implemented without concerns about generating spillovers, whereas smooth coordination is required between state-contingent capital requirements and monetary policy.

The economic analysis of racial discrimination in public accommodations is remarkably limited. To study this issue, we construct a national data set of nondiscriminatory establishments from the Negro Motorist Green Books, a travel guide published from 1936 to 1966 to aid Black Americans in finding nondiscriminatory retail and service establishments. We document patterns in the geographic spread and evolution of Green Book establishments, as well as the correlates of Green Book presence. We find that economic and social measures, as well as state laws relating to racial discrimination and antidiscrimination, were correlated with the provision of nondiscriminatory services. We then use the Green Book data to test whether market conditions and white consumer discrimination led businesses to bar Black customers prior to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. We use plausibly exogenous variation from white World War II casualties and Black migration patterns to isolate the effect of a change in the racial composition of consumers on the growth of nondiscriminatory businesses. We find that the share of nondiscriminatory establishments grew faster in locations with larger increases in the share of the Black population, but the magnitudes were small. These results highlight the importance of federal legislation in ending racial discrimination in public accommodations.

We suggest that forward guidance, via publicly committing the central bank to future actions and creating associated expectations, fundamentally affects bank lending decisions independently of other forms of monetary policy. To test this hypothesis, we build a forward guidance measure based on the language used in the Federal Open Market Committee meetings and match this measure with syndicated loans. Our results show that expansionary forward guidance decreases corporate loan spreads and that this effect is stronger for well-capitalized banks lending to riskier firms. Forward guidance also affects nonprice lending terms, such as covenants, performance pricing provisions, and the loan syndicate structure. Additionally, banks tend to initiate new lending relationships with lower spreads after forward guidance issuance.