Stocks that are expensive to borrow underperform significantly and for long periods of time. Every share must be held by an investor who does not lend it out and, hence, loses money. I find no evidence that investors hold these stocks in anticipation of lending them in the future. Instead, investors appear to hold these stocks for short-term trading. When turnover is high, high-fee stocks are overpriced and underperform. When turnover is low, high-fee stock prices are low, and they earn positive returns. More Robinhood investors hold shares when turnover is high than when it is low.

Following the recent resurgence of capitalism as a key subject in historical analysis, historians have highlighted the globally interconnected making and remaking of capitalism. Commodity-centered histories in global history have shown how to write locally grounded histories of global capitalism, emphasizing the complex and contingent relationship between the local and the global. In these accounts, however, businesses and global firms rarely appear as the analytical centerpiece. We argue that the globally active firm provides an ideal prism for writing locally grounded histories of global capitalism. Furthermore, drawing on recent usages of assemblage theory in economic history, we propose viewing “the global firm” as a “capitalist assemblage” in order to capture the spatiotemporally contingent processes through which capitalism and distinct ways of organizing business, labor, and life under capitalism emerged and evolved at specific sites and times. This approach will contribute to global studies and address limitations in business history’s treatment of the global firm.

Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) seems to grow in popularity by the day, but central considerations like best practices, standardized metrics, and a demonstrable positive impact on people and the environment are almost nonexistent. Yet, in the United States’ regulatory framework, one thing about ESG does seem clear—its instrumental role in value sustainability for investors. Drawing on postcolonial, decolonial, and radical Black theoretical perspectives, this article argues that the ability of ESG to capitalize on socioecological considerations is no accident. This critical analysis characterizes ESG as a paradigmatic example of the extractive nature of racial capitalist political economies like the United States. The article contends that ESG, much like the overarching liberal capitalist economy, is antithetical to the collective liberation project that is central to the radical Black tradition. In service of the imaginative worldmaking praxis that motivates this critical approach, the article offers a preliminary radical Black political economic framework.

Upper echelons theory suggests that CEO values and personalities impact their actions, driving organizational performance. However, accessing the black box of a CEO’s values and personality is difficult. Numerous studies of senior leaders have informed research on discrete psychological characteristics such as drivers, risk, temporal focus, and emotionality. This study builds on this work by holistically sourcing these psychological characteristics through a LIWC (Linguistic Inquiry & Word Count) text analysis of top-ranked CEO Twitter (X) postings. These data were transformed via a principal component analysis into four distinct psychological profiles, termed by the authors ‘grey flannel suits’, ‘self-actualizers’, ‘empaths’, and ‘greyhounds’. Binary logistic regressions suggested divergence in CEO psychological profile occurrences based on firm size. The profile analysis failed to detect significant top CEO gender differences; however, some gender distinctions were discerned from follow-on t-tests of the profile’s underlying psychological characteristics. The paper concludes with a call for further top management team psychological profile-informed research.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing the way firms pursue technological diversification (TD), yet its distinct effects on related and unrelated diversification remain insufficiently explored. Based on the knowledge-based view, this study examines the distinct effects of AI on related and unrelated TD to elucidate AI’s specific role in facilitating both the optimization of existing knowledge and the exploration of new domains. Using a multi-period difference-in-differences model and panel data from China’s listed manufacturing firms (2013–2022), our empirical analysis demonstrates that AI significantly promotes firm TD, particularly in unrelated TD. Additionally, we identify that core-technology competence strengthens the positive effect of AI on unrelated TD, while knowledge stocks weaken it. These results contribute to the literature on TD by underscoring the role of AI. Practically, the study offers actionable insights for managers to harness AI in balancing exploration and exploitation within their TD strategies.

This article examines how hospital workers engage in embodied mobilizations drawing on the life-affirming power of death and love to resist the demise of the French public hospital system. Drawing on Butler’s work on “What is a livable life” (2022a, 2022b) and Notes toward a performative theory of assembly (2015), the study analyses a four-year data collection of Facebook posts, from two activist collectives of hospital workers. Our findings highlight three forms of ethical resistance. First, hospital workers mobilize the symbolism of death to denounce the erosion of public healthcare infrastructure and to urge the public to help save it. Second, they use this symbolism to shed light on the precariousness of their working conditions and to elicit compassionate care from citizens. Third, they make the symbolism of love for public healthcare visible, prompting reflection on the importance of public service values in a society rooted in solidarity and mutual care. This work contributes to the literature at the intersection of social mobilization and ethics of care: first, it brings to the front death and love as symbols that illuminate the radical political potential of care in social movements; second, it advances the theoretical construct of “ethics of publicness.”

We examine hidden orders usage by algorithmic traders (ATs) and nonATs. ATs extensively use hidden orders but of smaller size than nonATs, who are the primary contributors to hidden volume. ATs’ relative share of hidden volume decreases with volatility, adverse selection costs, and the relative tick-size. Proprietary ATs (HFTs), who differ from agency ATs (AATs) in their information sets and potential gains from trade, hide orders to reduce competition for liquidity provision, whereas AATs use hidden orders to conceal information in their more informed orders and manage picking-off risk. Finally, superior technology provides limited benefit for hidden order execution.

This study provides direct evidence of the association between debt–equity conflict and investment efficiency in financially distressed firms. Leveraging a unique institutional setting in Japan, we examine the impact of lender-affiliated directors on the managerial decisions of their borrowers. Although banker-directors do not influence firms at low risks of default, their presence leads to more conservative financial decisions in distressed firms, thereby mitigating shareholder exploitation. They also reduce information frictions to prevent overinvestment and underinvestment. However, despite within-firm efficiency gains, potential spillover effects on other stakeholders raise questions about the broader welfare implications of this debt–equity conflict mitigation.