How do banks contribute to the green economy? Using a unique dataset detailing firms' revenue exposure to green business activities, we present new evidence that firms generating revenue from green products and services are associated with lower syndicated loan spreads. We find that the green revenue effects on loan spreads are attributable to firms' prospects tied to climate change-related opportunities and banks' environmental orientation. Foreign banks subject to mandatory environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosure regulations reduce the loan spreads to green revenue firms. We also find suggestive evidence that firms with green revenue tend to file more green patents following loan origination. While banks typically perceive green innovation as riskier and demand higher loan spreads, this effect is offset if a firm also generates green revenue. Collectively, our results highlight the pivotal role that banks play in channeling financial resources toward green business practices.

About 37% of Chinese listed firms have medical expertise, as measured by the existence of senior executives with a medical degree or medical-industry experience. Using the COVID-19 outbreak in China as a natural experiment, we find that the stock returns of firms with medical expertise, excluding those within the healthcare and pharmaceutical industry, are significantly higher than those without. The positive impact is more pronounced if a CEO or Chairman has medical expertise and if the firm is not state-owned. Overall, this study underlines the importance of diversified executive human capital on firm performance through disentangling macro shocks.

We study the influence of multi-sector conglomerate firms on sectoral comovement. Using an innovative network model of firms and industries, we derive a novel measure of the co-concentration of industries in which two industries are more co-concentrated if they share greater exposure to the same conglomerate firms. Using time-series, cross-sectional, and longitudinal tests on establishment-level data from nearly all US firms over 1991 to 2019, we find that industries with higher co-concentration exhibit stronger comovement in employment, sales, and asset growth. Controlling for alternative explanations, a one-standard deviation increase in co-concentration corresponds to a 0.32-standard deviation increase in the comovement of employment growth. In variance-covariance decompositions, we find that firm-specific shocks explain nearly half of aggregate volatility and industry comovement and that conglomerates play a significant role in sectoral comovement. Our framework helps explain how idiosyncratic, firm-level shocks contribute to aggregate fluctuations and influence business cycles.

We provide a macroeconomic theory where demand for goods has a productive role. A search friction prevents perfect matching between producers and potential customers. Larger demand induces more search, which, in turn, increases GDP and measured total factor productivity (TFP). We embed the product-market friction in a standard neoclassical model and estimate it using Bayesian techniques. Business cycles are driven by preference shocks, true technology shocks, and investment-specific shocks. Preference shocks have qualitatively similar effects as true productivity shocks. These shocks account for a large share of the fluctuations in consumption, GDP, and measured TFP and can be identified using shopping time data.

After medical marijuana legalization (MML) by U.S. states, firms’ cost of equity (COE) decreases, especially for those with more growth opportunities, higher productivity, or a more skilled workforce. This policy change also reduces firm risk and leads to an increase in labor supply through increased labor force participation, employment, hours worked, and net migration. Further, home prices rise after MML, reflecting increased local housing demand due to a growing supply of workers. These findings align with theoretical models that link asset prices to labor markets and suggest that MML can lower firms’ COE by mitigating labor search frictions.

This paper examines circuitousness, which reflects related information being spread throughout a narrative as opposed to being grouped together. Circuitousness in the MD&A is higher for underperforming firms facing an imminent recovery, a difficult scenario for managers to describe and reconcile. Such firms’ disclosures are accompanied by heightened information processing activity, such as EDGAR downloads and analyst forecast revisions. Additionally, initial return reactions are faster but incomplete, consistent with recoveries and the ensuing circuitousness increasing processing costs that delay price discovery. Changes in institutional ownership are concentrated among quasi-indexers, who rely on public disclosure but rebalance only gradually. Circuitousness is incrementally and more consistently predictive than other textual characteristics that are related but are typically associated with obfuscation, such as the Fog index and repetition. Overall, circuitousness in financial disclosure signals that a turnaround is imminent and corresponds to more costly information processing.

Research finds that climate disasters have had minimal effects on banks’ performance to date, and it has devoted limited attention to how banks shape societal exposure to the disasters. This study addresses this puzzle and gap. Examining the share price reactions of banks affected by billion-dollar disasters from 1994–2024, we find that on average these banks lost market value around the disasters exceeding 10 percent of the estimated damages, with this percentage more than doubling during the sample period. We next show that banks’ county-level mortgage lending is positively associated with property exposures to disasters and FEMA appropriations when disasters occur. Finally, we show that banks open new branches in counties that experience growth in socially advantaged population, especially counties with high climate risks. Given accelerating climate change, property-casualty insurers backing away from climate-risky counties, and FEMA’s uncertain status, our evidence highlights growing climate-related costs for banks and society.

We introduce the implied value premium ( IVP ), the difference between the implied costs of capital of value and growth stocks, to predict time variation in the ex post value premium. During 1977–2023, IVP is the strongest predictor of the ex post value premium. It also predicts the investment premium, consistent with the Investment CAPM. However, IVP ’s ability to predict the difference in cumulative abnormal returns around quarterly earnings announcements of value and growth stocks suggests that mispricing may also play a role. Overall, our results suggest that recent value underperformance reflects cyclical variation rather than a permanent shift.