How Monetary Policy Is Made: Lessons from Historical FOMC Discussions
We construct a new dataset of FOMC meeting transcripts from 1966 to 1990 to analyze the sources of heterogeneity in individual monetary policy preferences and study how this heterogeneity shapes policy decisions. Using these detailed discussions, we manually quantify and characterize each FOMC participant’s preferred policies along with their reasoning and justifications. We show that participants'...
Marc Dordal Carreras, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Wednesday, May 20, 2026 | 2:00pm-3:30pm | Room 337
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Too much at stake? Entrepreneurial Wealth Concentration and Firm Performance
Using detailed Danish registry data, we study how entrepreneurial wealth concentration—the share of an entrepreneur’s wealth invested in the firm—affects performance. We exploit the marital divorce of a minority shareholder as an exogenous source of variation in the majority shareholder’s concentration. Divorce generates a negative income shock that induces the minority shareholder to sell their ...
Fabiano Schivardi, LUISS University
Wednesday, May 13, 2026 | 2:00pm-3:30pm | Room 339
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The Value of Corporate Patent Utilization
We use textual analysis of firm patent and product filings to construct a novel measure of patent utilization rate, which reflects the extent to which a firm’s patents are applied in its new products. We validate the measure by showing that patents utilized in new products are more likely to belong to firms’ core technology fields, receive more self-citations, and are less likely to be sold, and ...
Jarrad Harford, University of Washington
Tuesday, May 12, 2026 | 2:00pm-4:00pm | Room 337
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Hiring Difficulties and Firm Growth
We estimate the causal impact of hiring difficulties on firms’ outcomes. Using a shift share identification strategy, we show that hiring difficulties have negative effects on firms’ employment, capital, sales, and profits. Quantitatively, a one-standard-deviation change in firm exposure to hiring difficulties explains around 9% of the variation in firm size. Firms adjust to hiring difficulties by ...
Julien Sauvagnat, Bocconi University
Wednesday, April 29, 2026 | 2:00pm-3:30pm | Room 339
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Bang for the Buck: Aggregate Impact of Firm-Level R&D Incentives
How do R&D incentives affect individual firms and, in turn, shape aggregate growth? We develop a novel empirical framework, grounded in endogenous growth theory, allowing us to measure firms’ responsiveness to R&D incentives and to aggregate such responses. After validating the predictions of our framework using three different micro-datasets, we apply it to Compustat data. We find that (i) ignoring ...
Petr Sedlacek, UNSW Sydney
Wednesday, April 29, 2026 | 10:30am-12:00pm | Room 337
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Adopting AI at Work: Attitudes, Threats, and Organizational Change
This seminar examines how artificial intelligence is reshaping communication management through both individual adoption and organizational change. Drawing on two empirical studies of public relations and communication professionals, it explores how perceptions of AI’s innovation attributes, particularly relative advantage and compatibility, alongside perceived threats influence attitudes toward AI ...
Sung-Un Yang, Boston University
Wednesday, April 22, 2026 | 10:15am-11:45am | Room 333
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Managing Perishable Inventory Systems with Positive Lead Times: Inventory Position vs. Projected Inventory Level
We study periodic-review perishable inventory systems with a fixed product lifetime, positive replenishment lead times, and a general issuance policy under the average-cost criterion. The optimal replenishment policy for such systems is notoriously complex and computationally intractable due to the curse of dimensionality. To address this challenge, we propose a class of projected inventory level (...
Xiting Gong, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK)
Wednesday, April 22, 2026 | 2:00pm-3:30pm | Room 333
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Technology Life Cycles: Investment, Growth, and Firm Value
We build a new century-long dataset of technology life cycles from USPTO patent titles, tracing 289 prominent technologies from initiation through emergence, prominence, and maturity over 1920-2023, and linking their patent histories to 9,047 global public firms. The earliest patents in prominent technologies are disproportionately influential and are primarily assigned to firms, especially large innovators....
Jan Bena, University of British Columbia (UBC)
Wednesday, April 22, 2026 | 2:00pm-3:30pm | Room 339
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Disclosure of Causal vs. Correlational Information in Markets with Correlation
We study disclosure of consumer information in competitive risk-sharing markets when consumers neglect correlation. Disclosure of a consumer trait mitigates adverse selection, thus improving welfare. It also leads to distorted risk assessment and incorrect participation decisions by consumers due to their lack of understanding of correlation, thus reducing welfare. The net effect on welfare depends ...
Andy Zapechelnyuk, University of Edinburgh
Wednesday, April 22, 2026 | 10:30am-12:00pm | Room 337
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Influencer Marketing: Boon Or Bane? Exploring Brand ROI
Influencer marketing has become central to brand promotion, yet it confronts firms with a fundamental trade-off between control and authenticity. While brands can govern paid collaborations, influence often extends beyond these boundaries, limiting firms’ ability to fully shape where messages appear and how they are framed. Using comprehensive data that combine influencer activity with brand sales ...
Katrijn Gielens, Tilburg University
Wednesday, April 15, 2026 | 3:00pm-5:00pm | Room 333
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