Home           CV           Research

Working Papers

Corporate Discount Rates (with Niels Joachim Gormsen)
Revise & Resubmit at American Economic Review

We assemble new data on firms' discount rates and perceived cost of capital.  Time-varying wedges between discount rates and the cost of capital account for low US investment in recent decades.
Website on Cost of Capital and Discount Rates  |  Apple News  Barron's  Byrne Hobart  Forbes  Matt Levine  VoxEU

Sticky Discount Rates (with Masao Fukui and Niels Joachim Gormsen)

Nominal discount rates are sticky with respect to expected inflation. As a result, real investment demand increases when inflation is high. This mechanism generates monetary non-neutrality and crowds in investment.
Online Supplement

Firms’ Perceived Cost of Capital (with Niels Joachim Gormsen)

Cross-sectional variation in firms' perceived cost of capital systematically deviates from expected returns, challenging traditional macro-finance models.
Website on Cost of Capital and Discount Rates

Climate Capitalists (with Niels Joachim Gormsen and Sangmin S. Oh)

Green firms report lower perceived cost of capital and discount rates in recent years, concurrent with the rise of "green investing."
Website on Cost of Capital and Discount Rates

Disaggregated Economic Accounts (with Asger Andersen, Niels Johannesen, Ludwig Straub, and Emil Toft Vestergaard)
Revise & Resubmit at Quarterly Journal of Economics

We disaggregate the full circular flow of money (consumption, income, and output) between small subgroups of consumers and producers. The measured flows determine the aggregate and distributional consequences of shocks.
Website on Disaggregated Economic Accounts  |  BFI Visualization

Publications

Forthcoming
Firms transmit crises globally through internal capital markets in a "Darwinist" manner, but are "Socialist" with respect to domestic affiliates.
BFI Brief  Booth Review  

April 2023
I describe how researchers can estimate spillovers that propagate economic shocks and how to overcome mechanical biases.
BFI Brief  Summary Slides  Editable Slide Files

July 2021
Increases in bank size can harm borrowers and real growth. Bank managers may enjoy private benefits even when bank efficiency does not improve.
Video Summary  |  BFI Brief  Booth Review  Die Zeit  |  Seminar Villanova  Seminar Virtual Econ History  Seminar VMACS  |  Online Appendix

Discrimination, Managers, and Firm Performance: Evidence from “Aryanizations” in Nazi Germany (with Volker Lindenthal and Fabian Waldinger), Journal of Political Economy

September 2021, lead article
Discrimination against senior managers causes large economic losses because qualified individuals are key to firm performance.
BFI Brief  Booth Review  Cato Institute  CentrePiece  FAZ  Freakonomics  Harvard Business Review  Manager Magazin  ProMarket  VoxEU  |  Online Appendix

The Effect of House Prices on Household Borrowing: A New Approach (with James Cloyne, Ethan Ilzetzki, and Henrik Kleven), American Economic Review

June 2019
Idiosyncratic shocks to house prices affect borrowing of households who face tight borrowing constraints.
Booth Review  VoxEU  |  Online Appendix

March 2018
The effects of bank lending cuts are exacerbated by general equilibrium effects: demand and innovation spillovers. Employment and output remain persistently depressed even after bank lending has normalized.
Presentation ESRB  |  BFI Brief  Booth Review  Die Zeit  |  Online Appendix