Knowledge that Transforms

When firms experience negative events such as lawsuits or earnings restatements, their directors also suffer. But what about those who leave shortly before the events? I show that directors who leave prior to negative events experience greater declines in the number of their directorships than directors who stay through the events, but smaller declines than directors who leave after the events. These declines do not appear to be voluntary or driven by forced departures. Instead, they appear to be the results of labor market penalties. The results suggest that resigning pre-emptively does not protect directors from labor market penalties.

This study examines how short-selling threats affect auditors. During 2005–2007, the SEC ordered a pilot program in which one-third of the Russell 3000 index firms were arbitrarily chosen to be exempted from short-sale price tests. As a result, these stocks faced significantly higher short-selling threats. We implement a difference-in-differences test with firm fixed effects to show that auditors react to the increased threats and charge higher audit fees to the pilot firms. Further, we find that the impact only exists when auditors are concerned with the bankruptcy risk or when managers are less likely disciplined by short sellers.

We study the effects of introducing competition for CEOs, assuming that the talent of CEOs is not observable and that they can misreport their performance. Without competition for talent, firms maximize their profits by offering inefficiently low-powered incentive contracts. Competition for talent removes those inefficiencies, but it leads to excessively high-powered incentive contracts, causing efficiency losses that can be more severe than the inefficiencies that competition mitigates. If misreporting is not a concern, however, then competition for talent has unambiguously positive effects on efficiency.

This paper examines whether public bank managers change both the composition and classification of their investment portfolios after SFAS 157. We first show that non-agency mortgage-backed securities (MBSNA) are the asset class most likely to be measured using level 3 inputs, which are based on unobservable information. We then find that relative to a control sample of private banks, public banks altered their investment portfolios in a manner that reduced the percentage of MBSNA holdings for which SFAS 157 disclosures are required. Taken together, this evidence is consistent with public banks attempting to avoid disclosure of level 3 assets through changes in both asset composition and classification.

Firms measure fair values using Level 2 or 3 inputs when items do not trade in liquid markets, limiting market discipline over the measurements. We provide evidence that firms holding higher proportions of financial instruments measured at Level 2 and 3 fair values report more conditionally conservative comprehensive income attributable to fair value measurements, consistent with firms trying to mitigate investors' discounting of the measurements. We further predict and find that this conditional conservatism (1) increases with governance mechanisms that increase the strength and persistence of firms' incentives to report conservatively and (2) decreases with firms’ earnings management incentives.

We examine the association between employee quality and financial reporting outcomes. Using the average workforce education level in MSA(s) where the firm operates as a proxy for employee quality, we find that firms with a high-quality workforce exhibit higher accruals quality, fewer internal control violations, and fewer restatements. These firms also issue superior management forecasts, in terms of frequency, timeliness, accuracy, precision, and bias. Employees located at the firm's headquarters primarily drive our findings. Our evidence suggests employee quality, particularly at a firm's headquarters, is associated with both mandatory and voluntary disclosure quality.

This paper explores the potential role of anti-takeover provisions (ATPs) in long-term value creation. Using a change in the legal environment in Delaware as an exogenous event, we document that a subset of firms with a relatively longer term focus (innovative firms) benefit from ATPs. Particularly, these firms experience an increase in Tobin's Q following a state law change in Delaware that increases the effectiveness of ATPs in defending against hostile takeovers. This increase is greater than that for non-innovative firms in Delaware as well as for innovative firms outside Delaware. Furthermore, the innovative firms in Delaware experience a stronger positive market reaction around the state law change dates, relative to other firms. Finally, in a cross-sectional setting we find that innovative firms with above-average takeover protection outperform other firms and are less likely to engage in harmful real earnings management. Taken together, these results provide empirical evidence of potential benefits of ATPs and help explain why such protection continues to be prevalent in the United States.

We examine whether managerial sentiment is associated with errors in accrual estimates. Using public banks we find (1) managerial sentiment is negatively associated with loan loss provision estimates, (2) future charge-offs per dollar of provision are positively associated with sentiment when the provision is estimated, and (3) the effects of sentiment are greater for firms with more uncertain charge-offs. Results are similar for private banks, suggesting accrual manipulation related to capital market incentives is unlikely to explain the results. Although economic fundamentals explain most of the variation in the provision, we find sentiment has an incremental and economically meaningful effect.

We investigate whether geographic proximity between corporate headquarters and IRS regional offices affects corporate tax avoidance and the likelihood and productivity of IRS examinations. Using geographic distance to represent information asymmetry, we find that corporations avoid more tax when located closer to the IRS unless they are close to an IRS industry specialist. This finding is consistent with taxpayers believing proximity provides them with an information advantage over the IRS. From the perspective of the IRS, we find that the Service is more likely to audit nearby companies and to assess more tax per hour from nearby taxpayers, except during constrained budget years. IRS audit likelihood and productivity are unaffected by the presence of nearby industry specialists, consistent with industry specialist proximity already constraining avoidance. Our tax compliance setting provides dual-party evidence on the proximity-information asymmetry hypothesis.

We examine whether analysts’ prior industry experience influences their ability to serve as effective external firm monitors. Our analyses of firms’ financial disclosure quality, executive compensation and CEO turnover decisions portray a consistent picture that related pre-analyst industry experience is of critical importance for analysts to play an effective monitoring role. Coverage by analysts with such experience is associated with reduced earnings management, lower probability of committing financial misrepresentation, less CEO excess compensation, and higher performance sensitivity of CEO turnover. We also provide evidence on several plausible mechanisms through which industry expert analysts exert monitoring efforts and limit managerial opportunism.