How does competition for talent affect firm growth? Using establishment-level occupational employment microdata and job postings, we measure local occupational market tightness and a firm’s talent retention pressure (TRP) based on outside job postings in its talent markets. TRP strongly predicts job-to-job talent outflows and captures firms’ talent-retention concerns. We find that higher TRP reduces capital investment, increases talent turnover, and raises talent retention costs. Notably, TRP dampens the growth of laggard firms but not superstars, as superstar firms retain talent more responsively to TRP and experience lower talent outflows, suggesting an uneven impact of TRP on the business landscape.

We study the trading behavior of financial intermediaries around Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) announcements in the S&P 500 index options market using intraday data. Proprietary trading firms are net sellers of options on FOMC days, in contrast to other days, with their trading activity concentrated in the morning, well before the announcement. Larger option sales by proprietary trading firms in the morning predict both a more accommodative monetary policy shock later in the day and a subsequent decline in option prices after the policy announcement, rendering morning trades profitable. We decompose monetary policy shocks into three components and evaluate potential explanations for these findings. Our analyses suggest that some financial institutions may hold an informational advantage regarding the Fed's projected future policy actions.

Interest rate shocks affect firms not only through their own discount rate exposure, but also through the exposure of other firms competing for the same local production factors. We identify this factor cost channel using commercial real estate as a location-specific production factor. When rates fall, areas populated by more interest-rate-sensitive industries experience larger increases in commercial real estate prices, dampening employment gains for a given industry. Exploiting within-county variation across zip codes, we find evidence consistent with this mechanism. The effects are concentrated where land supply is inelastic and are not explained by local demand or collateral channels.

Risk-free interest rates and the VIX index comove negatively on average, as predicted by precautionary savings. But this comovement turns positive on FOMC days. This pattern is consistently observed across a diverse array of risk-free interest rates, including nominal, real, swap, short-term, and long-term rates. Our high-frequency analysis reveals that the positive impact of monetary policy shocks on financial market risk drives this result. We provide an explanation for these findings in a model where levered investors akin to financial intermediaries hold and price a risky asset, such as equity. Upon an unexpected positive monetary policy shock, equilibrium interest rates and levered investors' borrowing costs increase persistently. This raises investors' leverage and the volatility of stochastic discount factor, leading to lower risk appetite and amplified financial market risks.

Lower income households have experienced higher inflation since the 2000s. I find that households who experience a rise in inflation (relative to national inflation rates) increase their borrowing from the mortgage market and holdings of housing assets. Empirically, I identify this effect by exploiting variations in relative inflation caused by exogenous shocks in exchange rates, since lower income households spend a greater share of their income on tradable goods. These findings can be explained by households relocating their savings to markets in which real returns are protected from relative inflation. A calibrated general equilibrium model suggests a smaller dispersion in home ownership between income groups but a greater dispersion in welfare, as a result of inflation heterogeneity.

Employees often supply labor to firms first and then get paid later. This paper shows that such implicit labor trade credits or short-term borrowing are important for both firms and employees. Using state payday frequency reforms between the 1860s and the 1930s, I find that firms reduced employment after being required to pay employees more frequently, which reduced the amount of borrowing from employees. However, the employees who remained employed were more productive and earned higher wages. Despite decreased labor demand, households, on average, were better off as demonstrated by an increase in home ownership, especially those households that are typically severely financially constrained, such as low-income minorities and females.

We study the role of firm boundaries in facilitating fraud in the production process. Using acquisition events between broker/dealer banks and mortgage lenders as shocks to local mortgage markets, we find vertical integration resulted in riskier mortgage lending practices both ex-ante and ex-post, accompanied by an increase in product misrepresentation.