Knowledge that Transforms

Managers prioritize favorable analysts during earnings calls, reinforcing analysts’ incentives for optimism. However, managers also frequently interact with unfavorable analysts, and this study examines the determinants and benefits of these interactions. I find that managers interact more with unfavorable analysts when compelled to do so. I then examine two likely benefits of these interactions. First, unfavorable analysts attenuate their negative views after interacting with managers. Second, price reactions to management forecasts are stronger for managers who regularly interact with unfavorable analysts, consistent with enhanced reporting credibility. Finally, using peer firm restatements as exogenous shocks to investors’ perceptions of accounting quality, I find that nonrestating firms with managers who regularly interact with unfavorable analysts experience attenuated negative returns relative to other nonrestating peers. Overall, the empirical evidence indicates firms experience significant benefits when managers interact with unfavorable analysts and these benefits persist amongst compelled and voluntary interactions.

This study examines the relation between CEOs’ preferences for environmental protection (“nature‐loving preferences”) and corporate environmental actions. Drawing on social ecology research, I develop a proxy for CEOs’ nature‐loving preferences based on their childhood exposure to greenspace and validate it using their positive discussions of nature during earnings conference calls. Findings show a significant positive association between CEOs’ nature‐loving preferences and their firms’ participation in Clean Development Mechanism projects. This effect remains robust after addressing firm–CEO matching and omitted variable concerns. Cross‐sectional tests reveal stronger effects when local environmental demands are high and when CEOs have greater decision‐making power. Further analyses suggest that these CEOs are associated with greater corporate carbon reduction, while market reactions to their appointments remain neutral. The study highlights the link between CEOs’ personal environmental preferences and firms’ environmental actions, offering new insights into individual‐level factors behind corporate social responsibility.

This paper examines how increased competition among environmental, social, and governance (ESG) rating agencies relates to ESG rating quality. We exploit the entry of Sustainalytics as a new ESG rating agency in 2010. We conduct a difference‐in‐differences analysis and provide three main findings. First, we find that higher competition decreases incumbents' ESG rating disagreements of the same scope. The negative relation between competition and ESG rating disagreement persists for same‐scope rating metrics not covered by Sustainalytics, suggesting that neither learning nor herding drive the results. The relationship between competition and rating disagreement strengthens for firms with more ESG disclosures, which generally require more effort to analyze. Second, we find that incumbents' ratings of ESG concerns are more strongly associated with future negative ESG news for firms additionally covered by Sustainalytics. This finding is consistent with competition improving ratings' ability to predict future negative ESG incidents. Third, we find that incumbents evaluate more difficult‐to‐measure outcome metrics for firms covered by Sustainalytics, consistent with competition inducing more effort. Overall, our findings suggest that competition serves as an implicit disciplining mechanism of ESG rating agencies' quality.

We investigate the effects of a qualitative tax disclosure mandate aimed at improving tax transparency and compliance by imposing reputational costs for firms. We use, as an exogenous shock, the 2016 UK reform that required large businesses to disclose their tax strategy. We find that treated firms—those that must publish a tax strategy report—also significantly increase the volume of tax strategy disclosure in their annual reports, but this disclosure contains more boilerplate. The standalone tax strategy reports contain narratives similar to those in the annual reports, are sticky, and their quality is correlated with those of disclosures on gender and human rights. Turning to real behavioral changes, we document no significant effect on tax planning across several proxies and firm characteristics. While we find that the mandate increased media attention on treated firms, our results suggest that this enforcement channel might not work in the context of qualitative disclosure, which may be hard to verify for outside stakeholders. Even in subsamples of firms for which we would expect higher reputational costs, we document similar responses. Taken together, our findings indicate that mandating qualitative tax disclosure has incentivized firms to portray themselves as good tax citizens without changing their practices.

We examine firms' trade‐offs in their voluntary disclosure decisions following negative media coverage of climate change incidents. By combining a keyword discovery algorithm and a fine‐tuned BERT model, we identify “hard” and “soft” climate disclosures on Twitter. Our findings indicate that firms tend to issue climate tweets as a rapid response to negative climate incidents. Additionally, firms with a history of hard climate change disclosure, as measured by ESG reports, are more likely to issue climate‐related responses than firms without such a history. Furthermore, we show that prior hard disclosure is associated with hard responses when the incident receives moderate media attention, but with soft responses when the incident receives low media attention. Our findings provide empirical insights for dynamic disclosure theory by illustrating how prior disclosure shapes firms' response strategies to negative media coverage.

We study whether federal judges’ personal exposure to financial fraud affects their professional behavior, in the form of sentencing outcomes in white‐collar cases. Following the methodology outlined in our registered report, we construct a novel measure of financial fraud exposure based on judges’ direct shareholdings in firms that commit financial fraud. Using this measure, we exploit the random assignment of cases to judges to examine whether judges exposed to fraud in one firm are (1) less likely to rule in favor of defendants in white‐collar cases involving other firms and (2) less likely to grant favorable pretrial motions to defendants. We find minimal evidence in support of either (1) or (2), concluding that for all but the most serious frauds, judges are unlikely to let their personal victimhood experience affect their professional sentencing behavior with respect to related cases. Our study broadens our understanding of the spillover effects of financial fraud enforcement and contributes to the literature on how judges’ personal experiences can shape judicial decision‐making.

We study the impact of social connections between judges and executives on the outcomes of Securities Class Action Litigation (SCAL). Judges who are socially connected to a firm's executives are significantly more likely to dismiss lawsuits against the firm. There is also evidence of faster resolution and lower payout amounts in connected cases. The favorable outcomes cannot be explained by the lower severity of connected cases, or by court, judge, or firm characteristics. Our results are more pronounced when executives connected to the judge are named defendants in the lawsuits, when connected cases involve less visible lawsuits or firms, and when connections between judges and executives are likely more direct. Our evidence indicates that social connections influence judge impartiality and meaningfully alter SCAL outcomes.

This study examines whether the efficiency of federal district courts affects the likelihood of SEC enforcement. The results indicate that the SEC is less likely to initiate enforcement actions against firms in less efficient federal district courts. In addition, the study examines the implications of court efficiency for firms’ financial reporting quality (FRQ). The evidence suggests that firms residing in more efficient federal districts have higher FRQ and the effect is stronger in subsamples with weak private enforcement regimes. Additional analysis of the choice of venue suggests that the SEC's decision to file in the District Court for D.C. is not affected by local court efficiency. Collectively, this study highlights the importance of an efficient federal judicial system for public enforcement.

Auditors frequently outsource audit work to offshore Shared Service Centers (SSCs) to reduce costs and ease the workload burdens of audit team members. However, concerns persist about whether these benefits come at the expense of audit quality. Using proprietary audit engagement‐level data, I evaluate whether greater SSC usage by Big 4 audit teams has an association with either, or both, audit quality and audit costs. I find that SSC usage is nearly universal in Big 4 audits, with the percentage of audit hours SSCs perform increasing in recent years. Consistent with the audit firm's objectives, evidence suggests that SSC usage is associated with fewer audit hours and lower audit fees. Importantly, I find no evidence that SSC usage is associated with lower audit quality. Overall, results suggest that SSCs have the intended effect of reducing audit costs without sacrificing audit quality.

This paper investigates how U.S. private firms communicate with investors around private securities offerings. Using multiple research methods including survey, interview, and archival analysis, I provide systematic evidence on private firms' public and private disclosure practices. I find that despite engaging in a low level of public disclosures, private firms actively communicate with investors through private communication channels, with notable variation across firms in terms of content and frequency. Consistent with managers providing relevant information, financial information is disclosed when it is particularly useful for investors' decision‐making. Furthermore, I explore the relation between private communication and public disclosure preferences and find a substitutive effect, suggesting that private firms may strategically manage communication channels to effectively engage with investors. This study contributes to the literature by describing the existing disclosure landscape of private firms.