Expert advice often extends beyond a simple recommendation, including information about alternative options. To explore the role of this referential advice, we enrich the expert’s informational advantage in a canonical model of communication with hard information. We show that when constructed just right, referential advice dissuades the decision maker from choosing options other than the recommendation, thereby making the recommendation itself more persuasive. We identify an equilibrium in which, with probability 1, the expert is strictly better off providing referential advice than she is in any equilibrium in which she provides a recommendation alone.

Revenue-sharing contracts allow firms that are distant from their target markets to leverage sellers' local expertise. Although these contracts align incentives in operational decisions, they also introduce the potential for sellers to underreport revenues. We analyze film-level box office data from 7,309 Chinese cinemas and find that cinemas report significantly lower revenues for foreign films than for comparable domestic films, consistent with foreign producers being less able to monitor reported revenues due to geographic distance. The underreporting of foreign films is lower in cities with widespread mobile payments, in multi-unit cinemas, and when foreign films have more predictable revenues, suggesting institutional factors that increase detection likelihood can mitigate underreporting. Further tests indicate the lower reported box office revenues of foreign films is not due to government intervention. Our findings provide novel evidence of product-level misreporting under revenue-sharing contracts and offer insights on mitigating these risks in international markets. Data availability: Data are available via the sources specified in the paper. The authors greatly appreciate the data supplied by EntGroup (http://english.entgroup.com.cn/enbase.html) but are not able to share the data based on the agreement with Entgroup.

The concept of materiality has acquired great significance in sustainability reporting. Through the theoretical bricolage of boundary objects and boundary work and drawing upon 91 interviews, we trace materiality’s evolving role across four interconnected episodes. Our findings show that materiality begins as a multivisionary object that draws the attention of largely unconnected groups. As different actors become more aware of each other, materiality becomes a meeting point object, and then a discursive and bridge-like object for them to talk about their relationships. However, the subsequent escalation of competitive boundary work turns materiality into a divisive institutional object that inhibits cooperation. Moving beyond a view of materiality as a way to distinguish significant information within corporate reports, our analysis fleshes out the visionary and relational roles that materiality has performed in sustainability reporting for a broad range of field-level actors to see themselves and their relationships to others in new lights.

We examine the effects of a large number of clients in an audit office using the same enterprise-resource planning (ERP) system such as SAP or Oracle resulting in what we term “client accounting system homogeneity” on audit efficiency and effectiveness. Using a unique dataset of ERP system implementations, we find that accounting system homogeneity is positively associated with audit efficiency. Specifically, we find lower (higher) audit fees for clients using an ERP system from a vendor used by a higher (lower) proportion of clients in that office. We further document that accounting system homogeneity is associated with improved audit effectiveness as proxied by two accruals-based measures, incorrect internal control weakness reporting, and restatements. Our findings are reflective of a new form of knowledge spillover from repeated experiences auditing clients using similar accounting systems, resulting in audits that are not only less expensive but also of higher quality. Data Availability: Contact the authors.

We examine the relation between managers' personal income tax rates and their corporate investment decisions. Using plausibly exogenous variation in federal and state tax rates, we find a positive relation between managers' personal tax rates and their corporate risk-taking. Moreover—and consistent with our theoretical predictions—we find that this relation is stronger among firms with investment opportunities that have a relatively high rate of return per unit of risk, and stronger among CEOs who have a relatively low marginal disutility of risk. Importantly, our results are unique to senior managers' tax rates––we do not find similar relations for middle-income tax rates. Collectively, our findings provide evidence that managers' personal income taxes influence their corporate risk-taking decisions. JEL Classifications: G30; G32; G38; H24; H32. Data Availability: Data are available from the sources cited in the text. Data on manager tax rates used in this paper are available at: http://acct.wharton.upenn.edu/∼dtayl/.

The stylized fact that volatility is not priced in individual equity options does not withstand scrutiny. First, we show that the average return of heavily traded deep out‐of‐the‐money call options on stocks is −116 basis points per day. Second, Fama‐MacBeth estimates of the volatility risk premium in stock options are similar to those in S&P 500 Index call options. Third, the mean return of heavily traded delta‐hedged at‐the‐money calls (puts) is −23 (−30) basis points. Fourth, the variance risk premium in stock options is negative. Our analysis highlights the importance of microstructure biases and robustness in empirical work with options.

Measures of private equity (PE) performance based on cash flows do not account for a discount‐rate risk premium that is a component of the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) alpha. We create secondary market PE indices and find that PE discount rates vary considerably. Net asset values are too smooth because they fail to reflect variation in discount rates. Although the CAPM alpha for our index is zero, the generalized public market equivalent based on cash flows is large and positive. We obtain similar results for a set of synthetic funds that invest in small cap stocks. Ignoring variation in PE discount rates can lead to a misallocation of capital.

The vast majority of cross‐border mergers involve private firms outside of the United States. We analyze a sample of 56,978 cross‐border mergers between 1990 and 2007. We find that geography, the quality of accounting disclosure, and bilateral trade increase the likelihood of mergers between two countries. Valuation appears to play a role in motivating mergers: firms in countries whose stock market has increased in value, whose currency has recently appreciated, and that have a relatively high market‐to‐book value tend to be purchasers, while firms from weaker‐performing economies tend to be targets.

We describe how episodic illiquidity arises from a breakdown in cooperation between market participants. We first solve a one‐period trading game in continuous‐time, using an asset pricing equation that accounts for the price impact of trading. Then, in a multi‐period framework, we describe an equilibrium in which traders cooperate most of the time through repeated interaction, providing apparent liquidity to one another. Cooperation breaks down when the stakes are high, leading to predatory trading and episodic illiquidity. Equilibrium strategies that involve cooperation across markets lead to less frequent episodic illiquidity, but cause contagion when cooperation breaks down.