Essays on human capital and financial economics by Jialan Wang.

Abstract

This thesis consists of three essays examining issues related to human capital, careers, and financial economics. In the first chapter, I examine how the process of corporate bankruptcy varies by human capital intensity using a sample of 1,493 public firms that filed for Chapter 11 between 1980 and 2003. I document two key patterns. First, human-capital-intensive are more likely to avoid and delay bankruptcy conditional upon entering distress, and they are more likely to use debt issuance to raise funds prior to bankruptcy. Second, human-capital-intensive firms are more likely to be liquidated within bankruptcy. In the second chapter (co-authored with Pierre Azoulay and Joshua Graff Zivin), we estimate the magnitude of human capital spillovers generated by 112 academic "superstars" who died prematurely and unexpectedly, thus providing an exogenous source of variation in the structure of their collaborators' coauthorship networks. Following the death of a superstar, we find that collaborators experience, on average, a lasting 5 to 8% decline in their quality-adjusted publication rates. By exploring interactions of the treatment effect with a variety of star, coauthor and star/coauthor dyad characteristics, we find evidence that spillovers are circumscribed in idea space, but less so in physical or social space. In particular, superstar extinction reveals the boundaries of the scientific field to which the star contributes - the "invisible college." In the third chapter, I examine the role of artistic films in the careers of star actors and directors. Using data from all films released in the United States from 1980 and 2005 and the career histories of 100 star directors and 94 star actors, I document evidence on the interaction between artistic films and the value of stars over their careers. Artistic films make up 12% of star careers, and they are associated both with significantly lower film revenues and lower monetary compensation. The propensity for stars to work on artistic films is relatively constant across their career, although it is slightly higher when stars are under 30 or over 60 relative to middle age. Furthermore, artistic films are significantly associated with Oscar awards.