Knowledge that Transforms

ABSTRACT Crowdsourcing—when a task normally performed by employees is outsourced to a large network of people via an open call—is making inroads into the investment research industry. We shed light on this new phenomenon by examining the value of crowdsourced earnings forecasts. Our sample includes 51,012 forecasts provided by Estimize, an open platform that solicits and reports forecasts from over 3,000 contributors. We find that Estimize forecasts are incrementally useful in forecasting earnings and measuring the market's expectations of earnings. Our results are stronger when the number of Estimize contributors is larger, consistent with the benefits of crowdsourcing increasing with the size of the crowd. Finally, Estimize consensus revisions generate significant two‐day size‐adjusted returns. The combined evidence suggests that crowdsourced forecasts are a useful supplementary source of information in capital markets.

ABSTRACT We examine how fair value accounting affects debt contract design, specifically the use and definition of financial covenants in private loan contracts. Using SFAS 159 adoption as our setting, we find that a small but significant proportion of loans (14.5%) modify covenant definitions to exclude the effects of SFAS 159 fair values. Only a limited number of these modifications exclude assets elected at fair value (less than 7%), while all exclude liabilities elected at fair value. Notably, we document that covenant definition modification is unassociated with ex ante fair value elections. We find that covenant definition modification positively varies with common incentive problems attributed to fair value accounting and negatively varies with benefits attributed to fair value accounting. Our results suggest that fair value accounting is not uniformly detrimental for debt contracting and fair value adjustments are included when they are most likely to improve performance measurement.

We examine voluntary disclosure and capital investment by an informed manager in an initial public offering (IPO) in the presence of informed and uninformed investors. We find that in equilibrium, disclosure is more forthcoming—and investment efficiency is lower—when a greater fraction of the investment community is already informed. Moreover, managers disclose more information when the likelihood of an information event is higher, more equity is issued, or the cost of information acquisition is lower. Investment efficiency and the expected level of underpricing are non-monotonic in the likelihood that the manager is privately informed.

ABSTRACT More precise public disclosure reduces uncertainty about economic fundamentals, but it can increase uncertainty about other agents' actions, leading to coordination failure. We conducted a laboratory experiment to study the effects of public information precision and strategic complementarity on coordination failure. Information precision is operationalized in terms of “granularity” (level of detail). We found that (1) granular public disclosure, which is disaggregated and precise, increases the likelihood of coordination failure and decreases coordination efficiency when public information is pessimistic about future economic prospects; (2) the deleterious effect of granular disclosure is stronger when strategic complementarity is high; and (3) higher levels of strategic complementarity decrease coordination efficiency. Overall, the observed likelihood of coordination failure is higher and coordination efficiency is lower than predicted by theory. Our findings have implications for the Federal Reserve's decision to publicly disclose detailed stress test results for distressed banks, and the debate on whether the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board should publicly release reports on firm‐specific quality‐control deficiencies of audit firms.

ABSTRACT This study investigates whether companies engage in audit opinion shopping activities by exerting influence over an audit firm's decision to switch the engagement partner (“partner‐level opinion shopping”) in the Chinese setting, where the identities of engagement partners are publicly disclosed. Adopting the empirical framework developed by Lennox [2000], we show evidence that companies successfully engage in partner‐level opinion shopping. Further, partner‐level opinion shopping is more likely to be successful if a company is economically important to an audit firm, and it is less likely to be successful if the audit firm is formed as a partnership rather than a corporation. We also find that companies successfully engaging in partner‐level opinion shopping exhibit significantly lower earnings quality. Finally, we directly compare audit records between incoming and outgoing partners and find that, for companies that successfully improve audit opinions after partner switching, incoming partners have a significantly higher propensity to issue clean opinions than their outgoing counterparts.

ABSTRACT This paper examines the approaches accounting researchers adopt to draw causal inferences using observational (or nonexperimental) data. The vast majority of accounting research papers draw causal inferences notwithstanding the well‐known difficulties in doing so. While some recent papers seek to use quasi‐experimental methods to improve causal inferences, these methods also make strong assumptions that are not always fully appreciated. We believe that accounting research would benefit from more in‐depth descriptive research, including a greater focus on the study of causal mechanisms (or causal pathways) and increased emphasis on the structural modeling of the phenomena of interest. We argue these changes offer a practical path forward for rigorous accounting research.

ABSTRACT This paper discusses the empirical literature on the economic consequences of disclosure and financial reporting regulation, drawing on U.S. and international evidence. Given the policy relevance of research on regulation, we highlight the challenges with (1) quantifying regulatory costs and benefits, (2) measuring disclosure and reporting outcomes, and (3) drawing causal inferences from regulatory studies. Next, we discuss empirical studies that link disclosure and reporting activities to firm‐specific and market‐wide economic outcomes. Understanding these links is important when evaluating regulation. We then synthesize the empirical evidence on the economic effects of disclosure regulation and reporting standards, including the evidence on International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) adoption. Several important conclusions emerge. We generally lack evidence on market‐wide effects and externalities from regulation, yet such evidence is central to the economic justification of regulation. Moreover, evidence on causal effects of disclosure and reporting regulation is still relatively rare. We also lack evidence on the real effects of such regulation. These limitations provide many research opportunities. We conclude with several specific suggestions for future research.

ABSTRACT This paper investigates whether greater competition increases or decreases individual bank and banking system risk. Using a new text‐based measure of competition, and an instrumental variables analysis that exploits exogenous variation in bank deregulation, we provide robust evidence that greater competition increases both individual bank risk and a bank's contribution to system‐wide risk. Specifically, we find that higher competition is associated with lower underwriting standards, less timely loan loss recognition, and a shift toward noninterest revenue. Further, we find that higher competition is associated with higher stand‐alone risk of individual banks, greater sensitivity of a bank's downside equity risk to system‐wide distress, and a greater contribution by individual banks to downside risk of the banking sector.

ABSTRACT Relative to quantitative methods traditionally used in accounting and finance, textual analysis is substantially less precise. Thus, understanding the art is of equal importance to understanding the science. In this survey, we describe the nuances of the method and, as users of textual analysis, some of the tripwires in implementation. We also review the contemporary textual analysis literature and highlight areas of future research.

ABSTRACT Accounting measurement and disclosure rules have a significant impact on the real decisions that firms make. In this essay, we provide an analytical framework to illustrate how such real effects arise. Using this framework, we examine three specific measurement issues that remain controversial: (1) How does the measurement of investments affect a firm's investment efficiency? (2) How does the measurement and disclosure of a firm's derivative transactions affect a firm's choice of intrinsic risk exposures, risk management strategy, and the incentive to speculate? (3) How could marking‐to‐market the asset portfolios of financial institutions generate procyclical real effects? We draw upon these real effects studies to generate sharper and novel insights that we believe are useful not only for the development of accounting standards, but also for guiding future empirical research.