The authors thank David Sraer (the editor), an anonymous associate editor, two anonymous referees, Julian Atanassov (discussant), Emanuele Colonnelli (discussant), Francesco D’Acunto, Todd Elkins, Alessandra Fenizia, Fabrizio Ferri, Shan Ge (discussant), Stefano Giglio, Todd Gormley, Edwin Hu (discussant), Lakshmi Iyer, Feng Jiang, Randall Morck (discussant), Holger Mueller, Jordan Nickerson (discussant), Cecilia Parlatore, Paolo Pasquariello, Roberto Pinto (discussant), Jacopo Ponticelli, Mounu Prem (discussant), Peter Reuter, Carola Schenone (discussant), Corey Seeman, Hannes Wagner, Tracy Wang (discussant), Moqi Xu, and Alminas Zaldokas, as well as seminar and conference participants at the Arizona State University Sonoran Winter Finance Conference; Católica Lisbon; the China International Conference in Finance; the Crime, Risk and Economics Conference (London); the DC-Area Junior Finance Conference; the Drexel Corporate Governance Conference; the Financial Intermediation Research Society annual conference; Fudan University; École des Hautes Études Commerciales de Paris (Paris); the Midwest Finance Association Annual Meeting; the Mitsui Symposium on Comparative Corporate Governance and Globalization; the Northeastern University Finance Conference; the University of Notre Dame; Purdue University; Shanghai Advanced Institute of Finance; Universidade Nova de Lisboa; the University of Alberta, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; the University of Maryland; the University of Michigan; the University of Texas at Dallas; the Western Finance Association Conference; the Wine Country Finance Conference; the European Finance Association Conference; and the China Europe International Business School Accounting and Finance Conference. The authors also thank the Italian Ministry of the Interior for sharing data on municipality expenditures with us and Alessandra Fenizia for her invaluable guidance in working with the data.
