Young firms' contribution to aggregate employment has been underwhelming. We show that a similar trend is not apparent, however, in their contribution to aggregate sales or stock market capitalization, implying that these firms have exhibited a high average‐to‐marginal revenue product of labor. We study the implications of a gradual shift in the average‐to‐marginal revenue product of labor within a model of dynamic firm heterogeneity. We show that this shift provides (i) a unified explanation for several aspects of the decline in dynamism and (ii) a possible explanation for why large declines in young‐firm employment may have only a moderate effect on aggregate output and consumption.

I introduce and test for preference for simplicity in choice under risk. I characterize the theory axiomatically, and derive its properties and unique predictions relative to canonical models. By designing and running theoretically motivated experiments, I document that people value simplicity in ways not fully captured by existing models that study risk premia in financial markets. Participants' risk premia increase as complexity increases, holding moments fixed; their dominance violations increase in complexity; their behavior is predicted by simplicity's characterizing axiom; and their complexity aversion is heterogeneous in cognitive ability. None of expected utility theory, cumulative prospect theory, prospect theory, rational inattention, sparsity, salience, or probability weighting that differs by number of outcomes fully capture the experimental findings. I generalize the underlying theory to additionally capture broader measures of complexity, including obfuscation, computation, and language effects.

This paper develops an empirical methodology for extracting pricing factors from investor portfolio data. We apply this approach to the stockholdings of Norwegian individual investors from 1997 to 2017. A two‐factor model, featuring the market portfolio and a long‐short portfolio constructed from the holdings of investors sorted by age or wealth, explains both the common variation in portfolio holdings and the cross section of stock returns. Portfolio tilts toward the long‐short investor factor correlate with indebtedness, macroeconomic exposure, gender, and investment experience. Our paper illustrates the benefits of using holdings data for explaining the risk premia of financial assets.

Focusing on the one‐off tax gains and losses (i.e., windfalls) associated with the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, we reexamine whether CEOs are rewarded for luck. We find that weakly monitored CEOs are compensated for the windfall tax gains but not penalized for the corresponding tax losses. No such pattern is observed for CEOs facing greater pay scrutiny. The pay for windfalls cannot be explained as rewards for CEOs’ efforts, talents, political activities, or as firms sharing their tax gains with all executives. The results are more consistent with rent extraction by CEOs facing weak pay scrutiny.

Using a novel data set of realized syndicated loan cash flows and a risk‐adjustment methodology adapted from the private equity literature, I provide a measure of risk‐adjusted returns for bank loan cash flows. Banks, on average, generate 180 basis points in gross risk‐adjusted returns and add $75 million of value annually to their loan portfolios. Banks earn higher returns when they lend to financially constrained borrowers, and the risk‐adjusted performance of bank loan portfolios exhibits persistence. However, banks require higher risk‐adjusted returns when facing their own financing frictions, and shareholders earn nearly zero net risk‐adjusted returns once bank staff are compensated for their lending effort. Overall, these findings suggest that banks provide valuable services to mitigate borrowers' financing frictions, and the present value of loan cash flows pays for the costs of providing these services.

This paper uses new data to provide a comprehensive view of repo activity during the 2007 global financial crisis. We show that activity declined much more in the bilateral segment of the market than in the tri‐party segment. Surprisingly, a large share of the decline in activity is driven by repos backed by Treasury securities. Further, a disproportionate share of the decline in repo activity is connected to securities dealer's market‐making activity. In particular, the evidence suggests that at least part of the decline is not driven by clients pulling away from securities dealers because of counterparty credit concerns.

We use arbitrage activity in equity, fixed income, and foreign exchange markets to characterize the frictions and constraints facing intermediaries. The average pairwise correlation between the 32 arbitrage spreads that we study is 22%. These low correlations are inconsistent with canonical intermediary asset pricing models. We show that at least two types of segmentation drive arbitrage dynamics. First, funding is segmented—certain trades rely on specific funding sources, making their arbitrage spreads sensitive to localized funding shocks. Second, balance sheets are segmented—intermediaries specialize in certain trades, so arbitrage spreads are sensitive to idiosyncratic balance‐sheet shocks.

We show that two important issues in empirical asset pricing—the presence of weak factors and the selection of test assets—are deeply connected. Since weak factors are those to which test assets have limited exposure, an appropriate selection of test assets can improve the strength of factors. Building on this insight, we introduce supervised principal component analysis (SPCA), a methodology that iterates supervised selection, principal‐component estimation, and factor projection. It enables risk premia estimation and factor model diagnosis even when weak factors are present and not all factors are observed. We establish SPCA's asymptotic properties and showcase its empirical applications.

Based on a comprehensive data set of classified (staggered) boards covering nearly all U.S. public firms from 1991 to 2020, we show that contrary to conventional wisdom, the use of classified boards remains widespread. Moreover, classified board usage over a firm's life cycle depends significantly on the decade the firm matured or year it went public. While classified boards were rarely removed in the 1990s, firms became more likely to declassify as they matured during the following decades. Decreased collective action costs and increased innovation‐related investments, institutional ownership, and scrutiny of governance contributed to this more dynamic adjustment.

The reordering of transactions from “high‐to‐low” is a controversial bank practice thought to maximize fees paid by low‐income customers on overdrawn accounts. We exploit a series of class‐action lawsuits that mandated that some banks cease the practice. Using alternative credit bureau data, we find that after banks cease high‐to‐low reordering, low‐income individuals reduce payday borrowing, increase consumption, realize long‐term improvements in financial health, and gain access to lower‐cost loans in the traditional financial system. These findings suggest that aggressive bank practices can create demand for alternative financial services and highlight an important link between the traditional and alternative financial systems.