Knowledge that Transforms

Abstract Auditors informally communicate with both client managers and fellow audit team members throughout an audit. I examine the separate effects of these informal communications on managers’ strategic behavior using a laboratory experiment in which participants in the roles of auditors and managers interact in a stylized audit setting. I find that informal auditor-manager communication strengthens managers’ social bonds with auditors, which results in fewer aggressive accounting choices by the manager. Moreover, these stronger social bonds result in greater honesty about aggressive accounting choices when they do occur. While informal communication causes auditors to reduce audit effort, I show that the auditors’ choice is appropriate because of the positive influence the managers’ social bonds have on manager behavior, ultimately reducing instances of audit failure. My study demonstrates that auditors can strategically use informal communication with managers to strengthen auditor-manager social bonds that in turn benefit the audit through preferable manager behaviors.

Abstract We examine Twitter discussion of sell-side analysts’ stock recommendation revisions. While many investors lack direct access to analyst research, we observe revision-related Twitter discussion associated with approximately 90 percent of the revisions in our sample, usually within three hours of their announcement. Revision-related Twitter discussion is greater for upgrades and for analysts from larger brokerages. Examining within-revision intraday price discovery, we observe increased price discovery during intraday windows with more revision-related tweets, especially for tweets that have more user engagement, are posted by more influential authors, or involve stocks with more intense retail trading volume. We find that revision-related retail trading is more intense and better predicts future returns for revisions with more revision-related Twitter discussion. We observe no such evidence for institutional investors who have direct access to sell-side research. Our results suggest that Twitter is an important channel in facilitating price discovery following analyst revisions, particularly among retail investors.

Abstract We explore reporting nonrecurring gains and losses (extraordinary and special items) among municipalities. We begin by documenting the nature, type, and frequency of reporting, finding that surprisingly few municipalities report items, including those with FEMA disasters and despite GASB standards. Results suggest municipalities with CPA-finance directors are significantly more likely to report items, while less likely reported among those led by unelected bureaucrats (council-manager political governance). Moreover, nonrecurring items are systematically associated with surpluses and deficits in a manner suggesting strategic reporting. Specifically, our evidence suggests officials report income-increasing nonrecurring items to reduce or avoid reporting deficits, and income-decreasing items to reduce surpluses. Strategic reporting is generally magnified when state laws allow direct voter initiatives and reduced when state laws mandate GAAP accounting or external audits. Overall, we conclude that accounting expertise and political governance structures are significant determinants of reporting nonrecurring items, and that some officials strategically report them.

Abstract We examine the role of identity in corporate governance, focusing on an important dyad: audit committee chair and chief financial officer. Drawing on identity theory, which argues that people have lower trust in those they perceive to be different from themselves, we posit that the audit committee chair’s trust in the chief financial officer is lower when the two are different genders. We find that a gender difference between the two is associated with greater monitoring by the chair, consistent with lower trust. This effect is attenuated when a firm has value-based controls that promote diversity tolerance or when a chief financial officer seems more trustworthy. We find no evidence that the increased monitoring improves financial reporting. However, we find evidence that the increased monitoring generates negative externalities by distracting the chief financial officer, as proxied by lower operational performance. Our findings underscore the importance of identity in corporate governance.

Abstract Research suggests that board members value financial reporting quality because executive dismissal often follows low reporting quality events. However, inferences about the board’s demand for reporting quality in these studies are confounded by board members’ reputation incentives because the events examined are public (e.g., restatements). We investigate boards’ demand for reporting quality by exploiting a private signal of misreporting: audit adjustments communicated to the Board by the external auditor. We first survey 29 audit committee chairs to understand whether boards use audit adjustments in their oversight of management and then conduct an empirical investigation to answer our research question. We find an increased likelihood of CFO dismissal following audit adjustments. This association is driven by adjustments that reduce income and by firms with better board oversight. These findings suggest that boards proactively use nonpublic signals of reporting quality and incorporate information from auditors into their monitoring function.

Abstract Using federal judge ideology as an exogenous measure of issuing firms’ litigation risk, we document that the initial public offerings (IPOs) of the firms headquartered in more liberal circuits are more underpriced. The effect is mitigated when plaintiffs’ pleading standards are more stringent and is amplified when judges have more discretion in their decisions. The effect is also amplified among deep pocketed issuing firms, while it is mitigated among issuing firms hiring reputable intermediaries in the IPO process. The results of additional analysis suggest that issuing firms located in more liberal circuits are more likely to become targets of lawsuits after their IPOs and that these lawsuits are less likely to be dismissed by the courts and result in larger settlements. Collectively, our findings underscore the salience of litigation risk stemming from the issuing firms’ legal environment in driving IPO underpricing.

We study whether mandatory surveys of patient experience affects patient mortality in U.S. hospitals. We exploit two settings where healthcare regulators mandated the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey: the 2003 Maryland pilot study and the 2007 nationwide adoption. Difference-indifferences analyses show increased mortality for hospitals that were subject to the mandate, relative to other comparable hospitals. We observe this effect before hospitals disclose their HCAHPS ratings, which suggests that it is attributable to measurement, rather than to disclosure. An analysis of changes in hospital expenses shows that, after the mandate, affected hospitals experienced a relative increase (decrease) in non-clinical (clinical) expenses. This finding is consistent with theories of multitasking, which predict that more incentives for one task (in this case, patient experience) cause some reallocation of resources from other tasks (clinical care).

Abstract US GAAP requires most intangible investments to be expensed as incurred, potentially distorting performance measurement. We examine whether voluntary non-GAAP disclosures mitigate these distortions for intangible-intensive firms. We find that intangible-intensive firms are more likely to report non-GAAP performance metrics when GAAP earnings lack relevance and that the resulting exclusions are of higher quality. Challenging the prevailing view that high-quality exclusions are limited to transitory items, we demonstrate that non-GAAP disclosures can also enhance performance measurement by excluding investment expenditures. Consistent with this mechanism, we find that intangible-intensive firms are more likely to exclude investment-related expenditures, that their non-GAAP disclosures are associated with higher returns to intangible investments, and that removing R&D enhances the predictive relevance of the performance metric. These effects are unique to firms that expense, rather than capitalize, intangible assets, highlighting the role of non-GAAP reporting in mitigating distortions arising from the mandatory expensing of intangible investments.

Abstract This paper examines how climate risk transparency influences house prices and credit supply. I contend that inadequate property-level climate risk disclosures induce homebuyers to demand a risk aversion discount on house prices, creating a potential market for lemons. Employing a stacked difference-in-differences design, I find that flood risk disclosure laws, by enhancing dwelling-specific flood risk transparency, raise house prices on average by 7.6%. Results strengthen in states with stricter disclosure requirements. Exploiting within-state heterogeneity and controlling for housing market trends, I find that the effects persist and intensify in regions with higher aggregate exposure to flood risk, greater information frictions, and more attention to climate risks. Conversely, the effectiveness of flood risk disclosure laws attenuates in regions where households are less concerned about climate change. Additionally, less sophisticated lenders extend credit to financially constrained borrowers in response to the laws but experience lower profitability.