Knowledge that Transforms

We explore the impact of overlapping institutional ownership (OIO) within supply chains on the earnings management practices of supplier firms. Utilizing a dataset of U.S. publicly traded supplier firms from 1988 to 2016, we discover that suppliers with institutional ownership overlapping with their major customers exhibit reduced levels of discretionary accruals. This finding implies that such overlap discourages suppliers from engaging in upward earnings management through the manipulation of discretionary accruals. We also find that OIO curtails accrual-based earnings management by enhancing the relationship between supply chain partners and bolstering external monitoring. Additionally, we find that OIO also mitigates the extent of real earnings management undertaken by the supplier firm. These findings remain robust after addressing potential endogeneity concerns. Our results underscore the significant role of OIO within supply chains in curbing both accrual-based and real earnings management by supplier firms.

We provide new evidence on the substitute role of mobile banking in small business lending after banks close branches. Compared to the matched bank-counties with similar economic conditions and bank financials, small business lending in the treatment counties decreases 0.064 million (equivalent to 18.8%) less after branch closings for banks with mobile apps than banks without mobile apps. The effect is more pronounced in high-income census tracts and for high-rated apps, suggesting that high-income customers and customers whose banks provide better mobile apps are less affected when banks close branches. We do not find a significant impact of having apps on small business lending when banks increase the number of branches. However, the effect of having mobile apps increases with closed branches' years of service. Our results imply that bank branches are still important in providing credit to the local communities. Mobile banking helps preserve the existing customer-bank relationship but cannot reduce information asymmetry.

The operating lease accounts for a large fraction of firms’ total productive physical capital and it is important for firms’ investment and real production. Empirical facts show that the aggregate productivity measure is an overestimation without considering leased capital (Hu et al., 2024). In this paper, I explore the effect of leased capital on aggregate productivity in general equilibrium. Leased capital can directly alleviate collateral constraints and mitigate capital misallocation, boosting aggregate productivity (Hu et al., 2020). However, leasing can lead to an increased demand for labor, driving up wages, which results in a decrease in the number of producing firms and their optimal capital scale. These indirect effects can lead to a decline in aggregate productivity. Quantitatively, the indirect effects dominate the direct effects with counterfactual leasing-improved policy, and thus aggregate productivity with leased capital decreases.

We study the effects of transparency disclosures on U.S. banks’ relayed culture. Using bank stress-test regulations and a regression-discontinuity design, we exploit the quasi-experimental properties around bank-size policy thresholds. We find that stress-tested banks improve their communicated risk-taking culture and overall corporate culture by improving the sentiment around drivers of risk-taking culture, such as leadership. Stress testing, however, has the unintended consequence of negatively affecting sentiment regarding teamwork and innovation. We find that only banks with strong risk-taking-culture sentiments further reduce their risk-weighted assets and risky loans while increasing profitability, highlighting the distinctive role of the risk subculture in banking.

This paper shows evidence of a positive relationship between institutional dual holders, who hold both equity and debt in a firm, and voluntary greenhouse gas (GHG) emission disclosure. Considering dual holders as particularly risk-sensitive institutional investors, we document that improvements in voluntary GHG emission disclosure are motivated by climate-conscious and risk-related considerations. The positive effect of institutional dual ownership is more pronounced in firms facing significant environmental risks, where disclosure enables clearer explanations and prevents exaggerated stakeholder reactions. The impact of dual ownership is also stronger in firms with poor information environments, where dual holders exploit their enhanced monitoring capacity through gathering information from both their public equity and private debt holdings. Consistent with our risk-based explanation, voluntary GHG emission disclosure reduces the cost of equity and increases firm valuation in firms with higher dual ownership.

We study whether sibling co-management affects the cost of capital for family firms in China. We find that sibling co-management strongly correlates with a lower cost of capital. We identify three mechanisms through which sibling co-managers (including directors) influence the cost of capital: providing coinsurance, enhancing corporate governance, and facilitating communication with investors. Furthermore, the effect is more pronounced for firms operating in regions with weaker legal environments and firms with auditors from non-Big 4 accounting firms. However, sibling co-management may also hinder external financing due to higher uncertainty during family power transfer periods. In addition, the value of sibling co-management is more salient for financially constrained firms and those in which at least one of the co-manager siblings has a finance background. Overall, the findings suggest that family firms benefit from sibling co-management, resulting in a lower cost of capital, despite the challenges that arise during family power transfer.

Over the last decades, firms have been incorporating digital technologies into their operations, a process known as digitalization. Nevertheless, understanding the link between digitalization and firm performance remains challenging. We propose a new firm-level measure of digital intensity based on textual analysis of business descriptions and quarterly earnings calls. To overcome endogeneity, we use two quasi-natural experiments: the COVID-19 pandemic and shocks involving suppliers affected by U.S. natural disasters. Non-technological firms with higher pre-shock digital intensity experience higher abnormal returns, higher profitability, and higher revenue growth during the shocks. The supply chain is one of the areas through which digitalization contributes to significantly mitigate the effects of these shocks, thereby enhancing firm resilience.

Historical rice cultivation practices have shaped cultural norms that significantly affect households' risk-taking behavior today. Using national survey data from over 90,000 Chinese households and a quasi-experimental design, we find that these culturally induced behaviors, in turn, contribute to significant economic differences at a large scale. Our tests show that households in regions with a higher historical rate of rice cultivation are more likely to invest in the financial market and buy lottery tickets, but less likely to buy insurance. The underlying mechanism is that collectivist rice agricultural practices increase trust, social capital, and social connections, and even allow for societal members to borrow without interest. Additional tests show that our findings are not driven by regional economic growth, government-provided social safety nets, Confucian values, or ethnic diversity. These deep-rooted, ancient practices have important policy implications for leaders in collectivist cultures trying to rectify behavioral biases in household financial decisions.

Bank lobbying has a bitter taste in most forums, ringing the bell of preferential treatment of big banks from governments and regulators. Using corporate loan facilities and hand-matched information on bank lobbying from 1999 to 2017, we show that lobbying banks increase their borrowers' overall performance. This positive effect is stronger for opaque and credit-constrained borrowers, when the lobbying lender possesses valuable information on the borrower, and for borrowers with strong corporate governance. Our findings are consistent with the theory positing that lobbying can provide access to valuable lender-borrower information, resulting in improved efficiency in large firms' corporate financing.

Recent work documents a behavioral tendency of investors to expect excessively high upside potential for low-priced stocks. These expectations expose low-priced firms to greater pressure for short-term performance because their poor earnings news leads to greater investor disappointment and larger stock price declines. Therefore, we hypothesize that firms with a long-term focus, such as those that invest heavily in research and development (R&D), avoid low share prices. Consistent with our hypothesis, we find that firms with higher R&D capital decide on a higher filing price in their initial public offering, are less likely to undergo a stock split once listed, and upon a stock split, choose a higher post-split price. We establish a causal link between firms' R&D and share price management by exploiting the exogenous increases in R&D expenditures induced by the staggered introduction of state-level R&D tax credits in the US. Our study suggests that firms with large R&D capital target high share prices to shield their long-term investments from investor short-termism.