Knowledge that Transforms

ABSTRACT Accounting standards require firms to distinguish recurring revenues and expenses from nonrecurring gains and losses, which are often referred to as special items. However, not all special items are genuinely nonrecurring. Exploiting the setting of earnings conference calls, we explore whether analysts can identify opportunistic special items, as evidenced by asking for more information about them. We find evidence that managers' discussions of special items more often relate to predicted special items, whereas analysts have more questions about potentially opportunistic special items. Managers adopt a relatively more negative tone and use more words when answering questions about potentially opportunistic special items. Finally, we find that analysts who question potentially opportunistic special items have fewer opportunities to speak in the subsequent call, consistent with managerial retaliation.

ABSTRACT We identify sustainability‐focused analysts using recent advances in machine learning combined with conference call transcripts. Sustainability‐focused analysts issue more accurate earnings forecasts, and the stock market reacts more strongly to their revisions. The forecasting advantage of sustainability‐focused analysts is amplified for material sustainability issues, small firms, and growth firms. Consistent with a learning curve in understanding how sustainability issues relate to future performance, we find that less experienced analysts are less likely to focus on sustainability and that they reap fewer benefits in forecast accuracy when they do so. Our results suggest that far from being an inefficient use of time and resources, focusing on sustainability provides a competitive advantage in one of the most pivotal steps in valuation: forecasting earnings.

ABSTRACT The digital evolution in auditing has triggered a rapid shift in auditors' required skill sets, with audit firms heavily investing in and extolling advanced data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities. However, this strong emphasis on newly required digital skills can lead many experienced auditors, who perceive these competencies as their weaker areas, to feel disaffirmed in their abilities. We predict and find, across two experiments, that auditors who feel disaffirmed in their digital skills more defensively discount specialist advice that places higher versus lower reliance on AI, but that an intervention in which auditors affirm their traditional audit skills mitigates this defensive reaction. Absent self‐affirmation, higher specialist reliance on AI results in auditors denigrating the competence and quality of advice that specialists provide. These findings suggest that disaffirmation escalates AI aversion, offering important insights into how audit firms can foster less defensive decision‐making in the rapidly evolving audit environment.

ABSTRACT We study the implications of inflation heterogeneity for individuals and firms through the lens of accounting research, applying measurement frameworks to the national accounting measurement of inflation. We first examine the systematic exposure of individuals in low‐income households to higher inflation relative to those in high‐income households. We show that this “inflation gap” is linked with future rising inequality in the form of widening gaps in healthcare insurance, education, homeownership, and credit card debt, as well as in a higher frequency of property crimes. We also provide an economic mechanism connecting the inflation gap with rising inequality, empirically demonstrating the role of basic goods in reducing the ability of individuals in the low‐income group to attain the social and economic implications that we study. In addition, we show a channel that connects the inflation gap to firms' profitability. Indeed, consistent with the inflation gap disadvantaging low‐income households mainly through basic goods, the inflation gap fluctuations are especially strongly connected to the profitability of firms operating in the energy and consumer staples sectors. Finally, we find that market power plays a role in this connection, where this link is even stronger for firms with high market power. Taking its findings together, the paper shows that differential inflation pressures have major implications for household well‐being and corporate profitability.

ABSTRACT Regulators are increasingly considering and mandating additional public tax disclosures to enhance transparency and promote scrutiny of corporate tax avoidance. We conducted three experiments to examine how such disclosures influence retail investors' perceptions of firms with identical effective tax rates but different tax avoidance methods. In the first experiment, participants evaluated whether firms were paying their fair share of taxes. We find that additional public tax disclosures reduce retail investors' tendency to differentiate between tax avoidance methods, subsequently affecting their willingness to invest. Specifically, participants use easy‐to‐process summary tax information in the additional public tax disclosure as a heuristic shortcut. The second and third experiments demonstrate that modifying the disclosure format and prompting participants to assess tax aggressiveness rather than fairness can mitigate these adverse effects. However, none of the cases significantly alters participants' perceptions compared to the baseline condition of no public tax disclosure. Overall, our findings provide insights into the design of, and the debate surrounding, additional public tax disclosures.

ABSTRACT We examine the impact of a 2020 “comply‐or‐explain” disclosure mandate implemented in Canada. This regulation imposed the first disclosure mandate extending beyond gender diversity to include racial diversity. Using federally registered public firms as a treatment group and provincially registered public firms as a control group, we establish two main findings. First, racial diversity increased among directors of firms subject to the disclosure mandate. Gender diversity also increased, but only for firms not subject to an earlier rule pertaining only to gender diversity. Second, the impact of the disclosure mandate is plausibly driven by shareholder monitoring, notably through director elections. Overall, our findings contribute to the policy debate on the effects of disclosure mandates on social dimensions.

Abstract Although the community of tax professionals is a key actor in the tax realm, its nature continues to remain elusive in many countries. Using a qualitatively driven mixed‐methods approach that integrates the insights obtained from in‐depth interviews and the results of a survey of practitioners, we examine the Canadian tax field. Although tax work has traditionally been dominated by lawyers and accountants, our study finds that a distinct expert occupation has taken shape, as evidenced by the collective identification of those working full‐time in the area. Theoretically, we show how individuals can effectively generate an occupational community through their collective identification with it and how professions that do not fit the ideal type or that are in the process of emerging may be understood. The concepts of boundary erasure and boundary emergence are introduced as variants of boundary blurring and boundary making to explain how boundaries in a professional field may be reconfigured, allowing for the emergence and informal closure of occupations. Advancing the understanding of occupational groups that have not yet embraced the professional project, our study offers insight into why some forms of expertise might not professionalize in the traditional way. Overall, the findings have implications for research on tax professionals as well as for efforts to govern their work.

ABSTRACT This paper draws on the social control and sensemaking literatures to study how a Big 4 audit firm in the Netherlands sought to contest the national oversight body's inspection findings on one of its audit engagements. Our case study leads us to develop the concept of professional ambiguity to capture the multiple, coexisting meanings and interpretations of audit evidence and professional judgment inherent in audit work. We show how professional ambiguity creates a space for discursive struggles between auditors and inspectors, enabling audit firms to engage in strategic sensemaking aimed at contesting looming inspection findings. In our case, this process entailed the mobilization of senior firm actors who reinterpreted the focal engagement as broadly acceptable—or “good enough.” Yet, when enacting this pragmatic reframing, the firm ultimately failed to overturn the oversight body's findings. Despite this outcome, we argue that audit firms seek to mobilize professional ambiguity and engage in strategic sensemaking to reshape oversight bodies' interpretations of audit engagements in inspection processes.

Abstract Firms with multiple pieces of information can disclose the information concurrently (bundled disclosure) or sequentially (unbundled disclosure). This paper examines the pricing implications of (un)bundled disclosure in a rational expectations equilibrium model. The model considers a firm whose liquidating cash flow consists of two components. Some investors possess private information about one component (e.g., earnings) and all investors are uninformed about the other component (e.g., unexpected events). We analyze three disclosure policies. In bundled disclosure, both cash flow components are disclosed concurrently; in unbundled disclosure, the informed cash flow component is disclosed early, and the uninformed component is disclosed later; and in alternative unbundled disclosure, the uninformed component is disclosed early, and the informed component later. We find that the disclosure policy influences the cost of capital prior to any disclosure through a risk allocation effect and a price informativeness effect. Unbundled disclosure results in a lower cost of capital compared to bundled disclosure, as it improves risk allocation and enhances the informativeness of the stock price prior to any disclosure. However, for alternative unbundled disclosure, the cost of capital can be higher or lower than that of the other disclosure policies. This is because late disclosure of the informed cash flow component alters investors' risk exposure to the noisy supply of shares, thereby influencing the risk allocation and price informativeness effects.

Abstract Sell‐side equity analysts serve as external monitors, yet evidence on how they fulfill this monitoring role remains limited. We examine whether analysts utilize earnings conference calls to monitor firms suspected of real earnings management and assess the implications of such monitoring. Our findings reveal that analysts are more likely to ask about discretionary expenses during conference calls of firms suspected of lowering these expenses to meet or narrowly beat analysts' expectations. These questions are associated with lower subsequent EPS forecast revisions, indicating a potential cost to managers. Moreover, analysts' questions on discretionary expenses to suspect firms are linked to subsequent increases in discretionary expenses and a lower likelihood of meeting or narrowly beating analysts' earnings expectations in the following 2 years. Overall, our results suggest that analysts' active participation in earnings conference calls potentially discourages managers from engaging in real earnings management.