We document a positive effect of product market competition (PMC) on venture capital (VC) staging. Employing large tariff rate reductions as an exogenous shock to PMC, we find that large tariff reductions lead to a greater likelihood of staged financing and a larger number of financing rounds. Cross-sectional analyses reveal that the effect is stronger for entrepreneurial firms that are younger, operate in high-tech and manufacturing industries, or receive investments from less reputable and inexperienced VCs. Our findings are consistent with the notion that by mitigating business uncertainty and survival risk, VC staging acts as a complement to PMC for enhancing entrepreneurial firms’ success.

We investigate the effects of opioid abuse on municipal finance. We employ instrumental variables, border discontinuity difference-in-differences regressions, and coarsened exact matching to identify consistent causal effects, while controlling for variation in economic conditions and demographics. Opioid abuse lowers credit ratings, increases new offer yields, and reduces bond issuance. Reversal of these effects following effective antiopioid legislation further supports causality. Differential effects due to investor heterogeneity suggest that opioid abuse affects municipal finance through a capital supply channel. Overall, we conclude that local opioid abuse impedes municipalities’ access to capital and thus hurts their ability to provide public services and infrastructure.