This paper examines how labor mobility restrictions like noncompete agreements affect firms’ investment decisions. Using matched employee-employer data from LinkedIn, I show that increases in the enforceability of noncompete agreements lead to widespread declines in employee departures, specifically in knowledge-intensive occupations. Established firms that rely more on these knowledge-intensive occupations increase their investment rate in physical capital. However, new firm entry in corresponding sectors declines. I provide evidence for different mechanisms to explain these patterns. Together, the findings show that labor frictions play an important role in investment decisions.

We provide the first analysis of the risk exposure and risk-adjusted performance of impact investing funds, private market funds with dual financial and social goals. We introduce a dataset of impact fund cash flows and exploit distortions in VC performance measures to characterize risk profiles. Impact funds have a lower market 𝛽 than comparable private market strategies. Accounting for 𝛽, impact funds underperform the public market, though not necessarily more so than comparable strategies. We consider alternative pricing models, accounting for sustainability and emerging markets risk. We show investors’ wealth portfolios and taste change the perceived financial merit of impact investing.

This paper studies whether common leadership, defined as two firms sharing executives or board directors, contributes to collusion. Using an explicit measure of labor market collusion from unsealed court evidence, we find that the probability of collusion between two firms increases by 11 percentage points after the onset of common leadership, a ninefold increase over the baseline rate. These results are not driven by closeness of product or labor market competition. Our findings are consistent with the increasing attention toward common leadership under Clayton Act Section 8. Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

We draw on new data and theory to examine how private market contracts adapt to serve multiple goals, particularly the social-benefit goals that impact funds add to their financial goals. Counter to the intuition from multitasking models (Holmstrom and Milgrom, 1991), few impact funds tie compensation directly to impact, and most retain traditional financial incentives. However, funds contract directly on impact in other ways and adjust aspects of the contracts such as governance. In the cross-section of impact funds, those with higher profit goals contract more tightly around both goals.