This paper examines how initial public offerings (IPOs) affect firms' internal organization. We find that IPO firms become more hierarchical and standardized organizations, characterized by additional layers, more managers, smaller control spans, and larger administrative functions. These changes occur mostly in preparation for the IPO and can be only partially explained by growth. IPO firms with greater human capital risk experience larger hierarchical changes. Hierarchical changes help firms standardize employee roles and formalize internal processes. Our results suggest that firms reorganize to reduce their dependence on key individuals' human capital when transitioning to public markets.

Using a market-indicator-based approach, this paper empirically examines whether the stability of the US and EU financial systems is affected by the digital finance revolution driven by BigTechs, FinTechs, and crypto-assets. These three sectors display different downside volatility profiles, with financial intermediaries being particularly sensitive to shocks from the crypto ecosystem only under extremely severe downturns, which are prevented in regulated equity markets. In that vein, we provide evidence that the Markets in Crypto Assets Regulation reduced financial systemic risk in EU. Overall, our empirical analysis shows that markets perceive the performance and riskiness of tech-driven companies and assets in differentiated ways, and that the transmission of shocks from digital finance ecosystems operates uniquely under varying conditions of systemic stress. Finally, we also document asymmetric spillover effects between advanced and emerging economies, with shock transmission from the US and EU to emerging markets being systematically stronger than in the reverse direction.

This paper examines how supplier IPO events affect their key customers’ cost of debt. The evidence reveals that average loan spreads for customers increase by roughly 20% (23.7 basis points) following suppliers’ IPO events. This negative spillover effect is more pronounced when suppliers make significant relationship-specific investments (high switching cost), when suppliers face less concentrated customer bases, or when customers face more concentrated supplier bases. Our results show that customers receive less favourable trade terms and are forced to pay more for inputs after their suppliers go public, all of which increase customers’ operational costs, risk and subsequent borrowing costs. Furthermore, we document that customer loan contracts become significantly more restrictive after a supplier's IPO. Finally, we find that the observed negative spillover effect is also present in customers’ access to the public bond market.

We compare the effects of external financing shocks on patient mortality at nonprofit and for-profit hospitals. Using confidential patient-level data, we find that patient mortality increases to a lesser extent at nonprofit hospitals than at for-profit ones facing exogenous, negative shocks to debt capacity. Such an effect is not driven by patient characteristics or their choices of hospitals. It is concentrated among patients without private insurance and patients with higher-risk diagnoses. Potential economic mechanisms include nonprofit hospitals' having deeper cash reserves and greater ability to maintain spending on medical staff and equipment, even at the expense of lower profitability. Overall, our evidence suggests that nonprofit organizations can better serve social interests during financially challenging times.

In this paper, we study champions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance among the U.S. publicly traded firms and their common characteristics by utilizing machine learning algorithms to identify predictors of firms’ CSR activity. We contribute to the CSR and leadership determinants literature by introducing the first comprehensive framework for analyzing the factors associated with corporate engagement with socially responsible behaviors by grouping all relevant predictors into four broad categories: corporate governance, managerial incentives, leadership, and firm characteristics. We find that strong corporate governance characteristics, as manifested in board member heterogeneity and managerial incentives, are the top predictors of CSR performance. Our results suggest policy implications for providing incentives and fostering characteristics conducive to firms “doing good.”