We study the procurement patterns of non-listed firms and examine how these often-overlooked, yet pivotal players in global supply chains adjust their sourcing when they anticipate accountability for externalities beyond their organizational boundaries. Using granular customs data and a surprise information release about the German Supply Chain Due Diligence Act, product-level regressions reveal that importing firms are 3.5 percentage points less likely to source a product from countries where the relevant production sector exhibits elevated ESG-related risks, suggesting that firms tend to cut ties with higher-risk suppliers. The effects are concentrated among firms with well-diversified supplier networks for a product and higher profitability, suggesting they have the necessary flexibility to respond quickly to anticipated regulatory pressure. Our findings suggest that mandates requiring firms to incorporate broad sustainability considerations into their operational decisions may have limits, particularly for non-listed firms.

Firms increasingly rely on markets for technology to acquire innovations developed outside their boundaries, yet acquiring intellectual property rights alone often does not guarantee successful implementation. Many technologies depend on tacit know-how that must be supplied by the provider after the transaction is completed. This paper examines whether common ownership between a technology provider and a potential adopter mitigates this implementation problem. I develop a model in which overlapping institutional investors cause the provider to partially internalize the adopter’s gains from successful implementation, strengthening incentives to transfer tacit know-how. This mechanism operates only when know-how is unverifiable – absent this friction, common ownership leaves matching and outcomes unchanged. Under moral hazard, the model predicts that common ownership increases the likelihood of technology transfer to a given adopter, that this effect is stronger when tacit know-how is more important, and that common ownership improves post-transfer outcomes conditional on adoption. I test these predictions using U.S. patent reassignments between publicly traded firms. Using within-deal variation across competing potential adopters and plausibly exogenous variation from passive index-fund holdings, I show that common ownership increases the likelihood that a firm acquires a technology, particularly when the transferred bundle is more tacit. Common ownership predicts stronger subsequent innovation and higher future firm value, especially when ownership overlap is concentrated among investors with stronger incentives to monitor the provider. These findings show how ownership structure shapes interfirm technology transfer by affecting not only who acquires a technology, but also how much value is created.

Climate policies do not operate in isolation but propagate through global production networks, affecting industries beyond national borders. This paper combines international input-output data with a granular instrumental variable approach to capture how foreign regulations transmit through upstream and downstream linkages. Distinguishing between market-based policies, non-market regulations, and technology support, the analysis shows that foreign climate policies can enhance domestic productivity, with effects shaped by industry characteristics and operating through technological adjustment along supply chains. The results underscore the importance of accounting for international spillovers when evaluating the economic impact of environmental regulation.