Does information leakage in a target's social networks increase its stock price prior to a merger announcement? Evidence reveals that a target with more social connections indeed experiences a higher pre-announcement price run-up. This effect does not exist during or after the merger announcement, or in windows ending two months before the announcement. It is more pronounced among targets with severe asymmetric information, and weaker when the information about the upcoming merger is publicly available prior to the announcement. It is also weaker in expedited deals such as tender offers.

We conduct a discrete choice experiment to investigate how the location of a firm in a rural or urban region affects the perceived job attractiveness for university students and graduates and, therewith, contributes to the rural–urban divide. We characterize the attractiveness of a location based on several dimensions (social life, public infrastructure and connectivity) and vary job design and contractual characteristics of the job. We find that job offers from companies in rural areas are generally considered less attractive, regardless of the attractiveness of the region. The negative perception is particularly pronounced among persons of urban origin and singles. In contrast, for individuals with partners and kids this preference is less pronounced. High-skilled individuals who originate from rural areas have no specific regional preference at all.

We propose a macroeconomic model with a nonlinear Phillips curve that has a flat slope when inflationary pressures are subdued and steepens when inflationary pressures are elevated. The nonlinear Phillips curve in our model arises due to a quasi-kinked demand schedule for goods produced by firms. Our model can jointly account for the modest decline in inflation during the Great Recession and the surge in inflation during the post-COVID period. Because our model implies a stronger transmission of shocks when inflation is high, it generates conditional heteroskedasticity in inflation and inflation risk. Hence, our model can generate more sizeable inflation surges due to cost-push and demand shocks than a standard linearized model. Finally, our model implies that the central bank faces a more severe trade-off between inflation and output stabilization when inflation is elevated.