This dissertation consists of three essays studying the relationship between corporate finance and monetary policy and macroeconomics. In the first essay, I provide novel estimations of the monetary policy’s working capital channel size by estimating a dynamic stochastic macro-finance model using firm-level data. In aggregate, I find a partial channel —about three-fourths of firms’ labor bill is borrowed. But the strength of this channel varies across industries, reaching as low as one-half for retail firms and as high as one for agriculture and construction. These results provide evidence that monetary policy could have varying effects across industries through the working capital channel. In the second essay, I study the effects of the Unconventional Monetary Policy (UMP) of purchasing corporate bonds on firms’ decisions in the COVID-19 crisis. Specifically, I develop a theoretical model which predicts that the firm’s default probability plays a crucial role in transmitting the effects of COVID-19 shock and the UMP. Using the model to evaluate two kinds of heterogeneities (size and initial credit risk), I show that large firms and high-risk firms are more affected by COVID-19 shock and are more responsive to the UMP. I then run cross-sectional regressions, whose results support the theoretical predictions suggesting that the firm’s characteristics, such as assets and operating income, are relevant to understanding the UMP effects. In the third essay, I document that capital utilization and short-term debt are procyclical. I show that a strong positive relationship exists at the aggregate and firm levels. It persists even when I control the regressions for firm size, profits, growth, and business cycle effects. In addition, the Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model shows that in the presence of capital utilization, positive real and financial shocks cause the firm to change its financing of the equity payout policy from earnings to debt, increasing short-term debt.

This dissertation consists of two essays. The first, titled “Sweep Order and the Cost of Market Fragmentation” takes a “revealed-preference” approach towards gauging the effects of market fragmentation by documenting the implicit costs borne by traders looking to avoid executing in a fragmented environment. I show that traders use Intermarket Sweep Orders (ISO) to trade “as-if” markets were single-venued and pay a premium to do so. Using a sample of over 2,600 securities over the period January 2019 to April 2021, this premium amounts to 1.3 bps on average (or 40%of the effective spread), amounting to a total of $3 billion over the sample period. I find a positive, robust, and significant relationship between the premium and different measures of market fragmentation, further supporting the interpretation of the premium as a cost of market fragmentation. The second essay, titled “The Profitability of Liquidity Provision” investigates the relationship between the profits realized from providing liquidity and the amount of time it takes liquidity providers to reverse their positions. By tracking the cumulative inventory position of all passive liquidity providers in the US equity market and matching each aggregate position with its offsetting trade, I construct a measure of profits to liquidity provision (realized profitability) and assess how profitability varies with the average time to offset. Using a sample of all common stocks from 2017 to 2020, I show that there is substantial variation in the horizon at which trades are turned around even for the same stock. As a mark-to-market profit, the conventional realized spread—measured with a prespecified horizon—can deviate significantly from the realized profits to liquidity provision both in the cross-section and in the time-series. I further show that, consistent with the risk-return tradeoff faced by liquidity providers as a whole, realized profitability is low for trades that are quickly turned around and high for trades that take longer to reverse.

The dissertation consists of three essays in financial economics. In the first essay, using historical prices for futures contracts tied to U.S. election outcomes, I develop a measure of firm-level partisan exposure. This measure captures the sensitivity of a firm's stock return to the changes in the odds of winning by a Democratic presidential candidate. I find that political beta is significantly lower in regulated industries and that it takes more extreme values for smaller and more highly levered firms. Finally, I document that firms with high political beta earn 4.0% higher annual buy-and-hold abnormal returns under Republican presidencies than firms with low political beta. The second essay studies mean monthly returns and compound long-run returns to over 64,000 global common stocks during the January 1990 to June 2020 period. The important practical distinctions between arithmetic, geometric, and dollar-weighted monthly returns are highlighted. In addition, it is documented that the majority, 56.6% of U.S. stocks and 61.3% of non-U.S. stocks, underperform one-month U.S. Treasury bills in terms of compound returns over the full sample. Focusing on aggregate shareholder outcomes, the top-performing 1.5% of firms account for all of the $US 56.2 trillion in net global stock market wealth creation. Outside the US, less than one percent of firms account for the $US 20.1 trillion in net wealth creation. The third essay documents evidence of managerial influence on shareholder voting outcomes. There are significantly more proposals that narrowly pass than narrowly fail. This behavior is more pronounced for firms with low institutional ownership and for proposals receiving a negative ISS recommendation. Mechanisms by which managers influence the outcome, such as meeting adjournment and selective campaigning, are newly identified. Finally, the market reacts more positively to the narrow failure of management proposals than to their passage. Combined with a theoretical model, these results imply that managerial influence on the voting process is value-destroying.

Firms reduce investment when facing downward wage rigidity (DWR), the inability or unwillingness to adjust wages downward. I construct DWR measures and exploit staggered state-level changes in minimum wage laws as an exogenous variation in DWR to document this fact. Following a minimum wage increase, firms reduce their investment rate by 1.17 percentage points. Surprisingly, this labor market friction enhances firm value and production efficiency when firms are subject to other frictions causing overinvestment, consistent with the theory of second best. Finally, I identify increased operating leverage and aggravation of debt overhang as mechanisms by which DWR impedes investment.