We examine the evolution of accounting regulation by linking disclosure policies and investments in a dynamic voting model. The disclosure policies are the outcome of voting by entrepreneurs, whose preferences are influenced by their investments. The investments are in turn endogenously determined by current and future disclosure policies. Absent external influences, accounting regimes are stable. A disclosure regime of high (low) quality and a strong (weak) economy coexist and reinforce each other. However, regulatory interventions can result in regime changes by changing the entrepreneurs’ expectations, even without direct enforcement. Unexpected shocks could also result in regime changes by impacting economic conditions and hence voter composition. Our analysis provides a framework to study the interaction between accounting regulation and firms’ economic decisions.

We examine how stock market feedback affects corporate investment when responsible investors are active in the market. These investors experience disutility when the firm’s investment decisions are misaligned with their nonfinancial preferences. A manager chooses between two projects that are ex ante financially equivalent: a “green” one aligned with investor preferences and a “brown” one that is not (e.g., due to environmental or social concerns). The success of the project depends on matching the investment with the state of nature. Because responsible investors prefer to hold green firms, trading is more informative when the firm signals green, strengthening market feedback. Anticipating this, the manager may misreport a brown signal as green to attract responsible investors. However, such manipulation can deter investors from acquiring information and reduce the firm’s value. We show that this mechanism is robust to several alternative investor compositions.

We hypothesize that if individual auditors possess unique audit styles that they consistently apply to different audit engagements, then client firms with a common signing auditor will exhibit higher earnings comparability. Using a large sample of Chinese firms, we find that client firms report more comparable earnings when they are audited by the same individual auditor than when they are audited by (1) different audit firms, (2) the same audit firm, but different audit offices, and (3) the same audit office, but different individual auditors. The individual auditor style effect is stronger for larger audit firms, senior signing auditors, and signing auditors with more stable teamwork experience. We also document that having a common signing auditor is associated with lower analyst earnings forecast error and dispersion for client firms. This study contributes to the literature by showing that individual auditors have a significant impact on client firms' earnings comparability.