This paper studies the role of lease financing in disaster-affected firms under collateral constraints. Disaster-affected firms demand funds for post-disaster reconstruction. However, the destruction of natural disasters leads to collateral constraints, which create external financing frictions. I find that affected firms obtain financing through operating leases after natural disasters. The significance of the findings highlights the importance of operating leases for collateral-constrained firms.

This paper investigates whether network effects on investment exist and whether firms strategically herd their connected firms. To construct firm networks, we utilize board-interlock networks where two firms share at least one common board member and estimate network effects on firms’ investment decisions. Our identification strategy is built on adopting characteristics of the peers of peers as legitimate instrumental variables. Empirical findings confirm significant network effects on firms’ investment and show that firms strategically follow their connected firms with high-quality information.

We study the classical relationship between a firm’s investment and q , for which an unobserved persistent shock is an important factor in the investment decision. In our setting, besides the potential measurement problem of q , controlling for the unobserved shock becomes a new challenge. We develop an estimation method that addresses both econometric issues given timing and information set assumptions. Using 16,256 unique public firms in the United States from 1975 to 2021, we find that q remains a significant factor of investment even after controlling for the unobserved shock and measurement error.