Hedge Fund Hold’em We find that hedge fund managers who do well in poker tournaments have significantly better fund performance. This effect is stronger for tournaments with more entrants, larger buy-ins, larger cash prizes and for managers who win multiple tournaments, suggesting poker skills are correlated with fund management skills.…

Friends with Bankruptcy Protection Benefits We evaluate whether social networks limit the effectiveness of targeted debt relief programs.  In our setting, individuals learn about the likelihood of debt relief from the recent experiences of workplace peers who file for Chapter 13 bankruptcy. While peers granted bankruptcy are able to discharge…

“Responsible Institutional Investing Around the World” Rajna Gibson (U Geneva), Philipp Krueger (U Geneva), Pedro Matos, and Tom Steffen (U Geneva) ABSTRACT We explore a novel survey on responsible investing by institutional investors around the world and match it to archival data on equity portfolio holdings. We study what factors…

The Persistent Employment Effects of the 2006-09 U.S. Housing Wealth Collapse We show that the housing wealth collapse of 2006-09 had a persistent impact on employment across counties in the US. In particular, localities that had a larger loss in housing net-worth during that period had more depressed employment as…

Information Intermediaries: How Commercial Bankers Facilitate Strategic Alliances Marc Frattaroli | Christoph Herpfer July 4, 2019 Abstract We investigate how bankers use information from lending relationships to help borrowers combine resources in strategic alliances. Firms that have borrowed from the same banker or share an indirect connection through a network…