Inflation and Individual Investors' Behavior: Evidence from the German Hyperinflation
Review of Financial Studies, 2023

Braggion, Fabio; von Meyerinck, Felix; Schaub, Nic
We analyze how individual investors respond to inflation. We introduce a unique data set containing information on local inflation and security portfolios of more than 2,000 clients of a German bank between 1920 and 1924, covering the German hyperinflation. We find that individual investors buy fewer (sell more) stocks when facing higher local inflation. This effect is more pronounced for less sophisticated investors. Moreover, we document a positive relation between local inflation and forgone returns following stock sales. Our findings are consistent with individual investors suffering from money illusion. Alternative explanations, such as consumption needs, are unlikely to drive our results.

Intermediaries and Asset Prices: International Evidence since 1870
Review of Financial Studies, 2022

Baron, Matthew; Muir, Tyler
We study data on commercial banks and securities firms across multiple countries since 1870. Balance sheet expansion of leveraged intermediaries negatively predicts returns of stocks, bonds, currencies, and housing. The predictability is stronger at shorter horizons, is robust to macroeconomic controls, and holds outside distress periods, in contrast to models featuring nonlinearities during distress. Intermediaries in global financial centers predict international equity returns. A new data set on individual stock holdings of Japanese intermediaries since 1955 shows intermediaries affect returns of stocks directly held. Our results suggest a strong universal link between intermediaries and asset returns distinct from macroeconomic channels.

Household Inequality, Entrepreneurial Dynamism, and Corporate Financing
Review of Financial Studies, 2021

Braggion, Fabio; Dwarkasing, Mintra; Ongena, Steven
Economic theories posit conflicting hypotheses on how wealth inequality affects entrepreneurial dynamism. We investigate the impact of wealth inequality on business dynamics by constructing local measures of household wealth inequality based on financial rents, home equity, and 1880 farmland. We then identify the effect of wealth inequality on entrepreneurship by instrumenting it with land distribution under the 1862 Homestead Act. Wealth inequality decreases firm entry and exit, and the proportion of high-tech businesses across metropolitan statistical areas. Wealth inequality also lowers the supply of public goods, such as education. Growth in income per capita consequently lags.

Financial Inclusion, Human Capital, and Wealth Accumulation: Evidence from the Freedman's Savings Bank
Review of Financial Studies, 2020

Stein, Luke C. D.; Yannelis, Constantine
This paper studies how access to financial services among a previously unbanked group affects human capital, labor market, and wealth outcomes. We use novel data from the Freedman's Savings Bank--created following the American Civil War to serve free Blacks--employing an instrumental variables strategy exploiting the staggered rollout of bank branches. Families with accounts are more likely to have children in school, be literate, work, and have higher occupational income, business ownership, and real estate wealth. Placebo effects are not present using planned but unbuilt branches, or for Whites, suggesting significant positive effects of financial inclusion.

Private Contracting, Law and Finance
Review of Financial Studies, 2019

Acheson, Graeme G.; Campbell, Gareth; Turner, John D.
In the late nineteenth century Britain had almost no mandatory shareholder protections, but had very developed financial markets. We argue that private contracting between shareholders and corporations meant that the absence of statutory protections was immaterial. Using approximately 500 articles of association from before 1900, we code the protections offered to shareholders in these private contracts. We find that firms voluntarily offered shareholders many of the protections that were subsequently included in statutory corporate law. We also find that companies offering better protection to shareholders had less concentrated ownership.