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We study the effect of personal wealth on entrepreneurial decisions using data on mineral payments from Texas shale drilling to individuals throughout the United States. Large cash windfalls increase business formation by 0.8 to 2.1 percentage points, but do not affect transitions to self-employment. By contrast, cash windfalls significantly extend self-employment spells, but do not affect the duration of business ownership. Our findings help reconcile contrasting findings in prior work: liquidity constraints have different effects on entrepreneurial activity that may depend on the entrepreneur’s motivations.

We derive a measure that captures the extent to which common ownership shifts managers’ incentives to internalize externalities. A key feature of the measure is that it allows for the possibility that not all investors are attentive to whether a manager's actions benefit the investor's overall portfolio. Empirically, we show that potential drivers of common ownership, including mergers in the asset management industry and, under certain circumstances, even indexing, could diminish managerial motives to internalize externalities. Our findings illustrate the importance of accounting for investor inattention when analyzing whether the growth of common ownership affects managerial incentives.

This paper documents a previously unrecognized debt-related investment distortion. Using detailed project-level data for 69 firms in the oil and gas industry, we find that highly levered firms pull forward investment, completing projects early at the expense of long-run project returns and project value. This behavior is particularly pronounced prior to debt renegotiations. We test several channels that could explain this behavior and find evidence consistent with equity holders sacrificing long-run project returns to enhance collateral values and, by extension, mitigate lending frictions at debt renegotiations.

I exploit exogenous changes in local credit supply from shale discoveries to identify where and when local access to finance is economically important for firms. I find that the real effects of a credit supply shock are linked to local lending market characteristics. Changes in local credit supply have significant real effects in lending markets dominated by small banks, while there is no effect in other markets. These results suggest that small banks, which do not benefit from deep internal capital markets, face economically meaningful frictions in accessing external interbank markets to fund loans. The effect in other markets, which have large multimarket banks, indicates that these markets are not as dependent on local funding sources for lending. These findings illustrate the important role that the internal capital markets of banks have on real outcomes. The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2017.2818 . This paper was accepted by Amit Seru, finance.

We study how ownership structure, in particular public listing status, affects workplace safety and productivity tradeoffs. Theory offers competing hypotheses on how listing related frictions affect these tradeoffs. We exploit detailed asset-level data in the U.S. coal industry and find that workplace safety deteriorates dramatically under public firm ownership, primarily in mines that experience the largest productivity increases. We find evidence consistent with information asymmetry between managers and shareholders of public firms, and ties of private firm ownership with local communities being first-order drivers of workplace safety and productivity tradeoffs.

We study how ownership structure, in particular public listing status, affects workplace safety and productivity tradeoffs. Theory offers competing hypotheses on how listing related frictions affect these tradeoffs. We exploit detailed asset-level data in the U.S. coal industry and find that workplace safety deteriorates dramatically under public firm ownership, primarily in mines that experience the largest productivity increases. We find evidence consistent with information asymmetry between managers and shareholders of public firms, and ties of private firm ownership with local communities being first-order drivers of workplace safety and productivity tradeoffs. Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

How do persistent cash flow shocks affect debt repayment across the distribution of households? Using individual data on natural gas shale royalty payments matched with credit bureau data for 215,639 consumers, we estimate that individuals repay 33 cents of debt per dollar of windfall, and that initially-subprime individuals repay approximately 5 times more debt than initially-prime individuals do. This difference in debt repayment is driven by changes to revolving debt balances. Finally, we show that debt repayment precedes durable goods consumption, particularly for households who were initially financially constrained. These results shed new light on how deleveraging affects household consumption.

We examine how wealth windfalls affect self-employment decisions using data on cash payments from claims on Texas shale drilling to people throughout the United States. Individuals who receive large wealth shocks (greater than $50,000) have 51% higher self-employment rates. The increase in self-employment rates is driven by individuals who lengthen existing self-employment spells, and not by individuals who leave regular employment for self-employment. Moreover, the effect of wealth reverts for individuals whose payments run out. Rather than alleviating a financial constraint, our evidence suggests that unrestricted cash windfalls affect self-employment decisions primarily through self-employment’s non-pecuniary benefits.

We study the effect of personal wealth on entrepreneurial decisions using data on mineral payments from Texas shale drilling to individuals throughout the United States. Large cash windfalls increase business formation by 0.8 to 2.1 percentage points, but do not affect transitions to self-employment. By contrast, cash windfalls significantly extend self-employment spells, but do not affect the duration of business ownership. Our findings help reconcile contrasting findings in prior work: liquidity constraints have different effects on entrepreneurial activity that may depend on the entrepreneur’s motivations.

We exploit an exogenous change in basis risk in the oil and gas industry to analyze the channels through which hedging affects firm value. Using a difference-in-differences framework, we find that firms affected by a basis risk shock reduce investment, have lower valuations, sell assets, and reduce debt. Our findings are driven by firms with ex ante high leverage. Overall, our results provide evidence that reducing the probability of financial distress and underinvestment risk are first-order channels through which hedging affects firm value. Received October 5, 2015; editorial decision December 22, 2016 by Editor David Denis.

We study when and why firms exercise real options. Using detailed project-level investment data, we find that the likelihood that a firm exercises a real option is strongly related to peer exercise behavior. Peer exercise decisions are as important in explaining exercise behavior as variables commonly associated with standard real option theories, such as volatility. We identify peer effects using localized exogenous variation in peer project exercise decisions and find evidence consistent with information externalities being important for exercise behavior. (JEL G30, G31, G32)

We study how listing status affects investment behavior. Theory offers competing hypotheses on how listing-related frictions affect investment decisions. We use detailed data on 74,670 individual projects in the U.S. natural gas industry to show that private firms respond less than public firms to changes in investment opportunities. Private firms adjust drilling activity for low capital-intensity investments. However, they do not increase drilling in response to new capital-intensive growth opportunities. Instead, they sell these projects to public firms. Our evidence suggests that differences in access to external capital are important in explaining the investment behavior of public and private firms.

We derive a measure that captures the extent to which overlapping ownership structures shift managers’ incentives to internalize externalities. A key feature of the measure is that it allows for the possibility that not all investors are attentive to whether a manager’s actions benefit the investor’s overall portfolio. Empirically, we show that potential drivers of ownership overlap, including mergers in the asset management industry and the growth of indexing, could in fact diminish managerial motives. Our findings illustrate the importance of accounting for investor inattention and cast doubt on the possibility that the growth of common ownership has had a significant impact on managerial incentives.

We use evidence from asset price data to quantify the contribution of shale oil to the U.S. economy. Equity market valuations of rms engaged in shale oil extraction reect the market’s expectations about the future growth in shale oil supply and its potential for raising aggregate productivity in the U.S. economy. We use returns on an index of shale oil producers orthogonalized with respect to oil prices and industry-wide return controls to extract an empirical measure of shale-specic productivity innovations. This hedged strategy explains roughly 10% of the increase in aggregate U.S. equity market capitalization since 2010.

I empirically test whether firms engage in risk-shifting. Contrary to what risk-shifting theory predicts, I find that firms reduce investment risk when they approach financial distress. To identify the effect of distress on risk-taking, I use a natural experiment with exogenous changes to leverage. Risk reduction is most prevalent among firms that have shorter maturity debt, bank debt, and tighter bank loan financial covenants. These findings suggest that debt composition and financial covenants serve as important mechanisms to mitigate debt-equity agency conflicts, such as risk-shifting, that are not explicitly contracted on.Received January 8, 2015; accepted May 27, 2016 by Editor David Denis.

This paper studies how shifts in voter preferences from large wealth shocks affect political change. Support for conservatives rises after shale oil and gas booms and Republican candidates gain votes. Roll-call voting becomes more conservative after shale booms across many issues, including those unrelated to energy. These changes occur because Republicans win seats from Democrats, as opposed to Democratic incumbents voting more conservatively. Even among incumbent Democrats who do vote more conservatively, we find no increase in their re-election likelihood. The results suggest that incumbent politicians face challenges committing to move toward new voter preferences.

Using exogenous deposit windfalls from oil and natural gas shale discoveries, we demonstrate that bank branch networks help integrate U.S. lending markets. We find that banks exposed to shale booms increase their mortgage lending in non-boom counties by 0.93% per 1% increase in deposits. This effect is present only in markets where banks have branches and is strongest for mortgages that are hard to securitize. Our findings suggest that contracting frictions limit the ability of arm's length finance to integrate credit markets fully. Branch networks continue to play an important role in financial integration, despite the development of securitization markets.

Using exogenous deposit windfalls from oil and natural gas shale discoveries, we demonstrate that bank branch networks help integrate U.S. lending markets. We find that banks exposed to shale booms increase their mortgage lending in non-boom counties by 0.93% per 1% increase in deposits. This effect is present only in markets where banks have branches and is strongest for mortgages that are hard to securitize. Our findings suggest that contracting frictions limit the ability of arm’s length finance to integrate credit markets fully. Branch networks continue to play an important role in financial integration, despite the development of securitization markets.