Working Papers

Under Review / Completed Papers

1) Spillover Effects of Accelerated Depreciation on Small Business Investment (with Riddha Basu  and Doyeon Kim ) 

Revise and Resubmit (Second Round) at Journal of Accounting Research

-CFEA 2022 , NFA 2022 , FMA 2022 , CICF 2022, WFA 2022, MFA 2022, FOM Group Conference 2021, NZFM 2021, EGROW 2021, IFC 2021, 

New Working Papers

2) Preemptive Corporate Environmental Investment: Evidence from Large Plant Entry Announcements   (with Sangeun Ha)  NEW!  (available on request)

Do firms preemptively invest in a clean working environment in anticipation of the change in competitive threats in the labor market? Using manufacturing plant location contests, we show that incumbent plants reduce on-site toxic releases by 9.3% following entry announcements, especially hazardous chemicals with no reduction in off-site transfers and no loss of economic output. These firms invest in process and production modifications, the capital-intensive and irreversible category of abatement activity. We find that results are not necessarily driven by regulatory pressure or investor scrutiny. This effect is stronger when incumbent plants share similar labor pool with new plants or are in skill-intensive industries, and when the new plant is expected to be cleaner than the incumbent plant. The incumbent firms, which reduced toxic releases, experience lower wage growth and a worker turnover ratio. A back-of-the-envelope estimate shows a savings of $3.38 in wages for a dollar abatement expenditure. Our findings demonstrate that firms use irreversible abatement investment as a pre-commitment device, motivating environmental improvement beyond external regulatory or market constraints.

   --KER 2026, IIOC 2026, SDU Finance Workshop 2026, Copenhagen Business School, Seoul National University, Gothenburg University, and University of Copenhagen, LERA ASSA 2027*(Scheduled)

3) Pollution, Pooling, and Premiums: Spillovers from Toxic Plant Entry on Corporate Healthcare Costs  (with Gunjan Seth)  NEW!  (available on request)

Employer-sponsored health insurance is a major operating cost, yet little is known about how local industrial activity affects premiums. We show that toxic plant entry reduces premiums for nearby incumbent firms by about 10%, even though premiums are higher cross-sectionally in more polluted areas. The decline is larger when entrants add more workers, smaller when entrants are more toxic, and absent for self-insured incumbent firms and single-insurer markets. The decline is larger in markets with more insurance providers. These results are consistent with geographic risk pooling in competitive insurance markets. Non-toxic plant entry leads to larger premium declines, while carcinogen reclassification reports increase premiums by 14%, confirming that insurers also price health-risk information. Overall, employer health insurance costs depend not only on firm characteristics, but also on the composition of the local insurance pool and insurers’ perceptions of environmental health risk.

            --UEA 2026 (Scheduled), LERA ASSA 2027*(Scheduled)

Old  Working Papers

4) Impact of Large Firms' Bankruptcies on Local Governments  (with Sudheer Chava and Baridhi Malakar) 

--Best Paper Award at the Annual Meeting of AEFIN Finance Forum, 2021

---AFA 2023, MFA 2022, AREUEA/ASSA Meeting, 2022, FMA 2021, SIEP 2021, INFER, 2021, AREUEA -Singapore, 2021, UEA - European Meeting, 2021,

5) Costly Entrepreneurship  (with Sudheer Chava, Manasa Gopal, and Yafei Zhang)  NEW!  (available on request)

          --University of Kentucky Finance Conference 2023*, Boulder Summer Conference on Consumer Financial Decision Making (Poster) 2023*

6) Worker Mobility and Firm Leverage: Evidence from State Health Mandates (with S Lakshmi Naaraayanan) 

         --Society of Financial Studies Cavalcade-Asia Pacific 2017,  American Finance Association PhD Poster Session 2018, Midwest Finance Association 2018, Asian Finance Association 2018

7) Enemy at the Gates: Trade Credit v/s Price Discount as a Strategic Tool

           - Asian Bureau of Economic Research Conference 2016, Financial Intermediation Research Society Conference 2017, Society of Financial Studies Cavalcade 2017, Conference on Financial Economics and Accounting 2017, Emerging Market Finance 2017