Knowledge that Transforms

Despite the rapid growth of podcasts as a source of investment information, we know little about their potential capital market effects. We find that the release of podcasts that provide listeners with firm-specific investment analysis is associated with significant increases in trading activity, particularly among retail investors. When released following earnings announcements, investing podcasts appear to provide information to less-informed investors that helps them better process the news, as podcast discussion is associated with reductions in information asymmetry. This effect is stronger for podcasts that include guests, have greater narrative distinctiveness across speakers, convey information more rapidly, and focus more on fundamental analysis. Podcast discussion is also associated with faster price formation and heightened earnings response coefficients, with no evidence of return reversals. Overall, our results are consistent with investing podcasts helping investors to better process information and provide novel evidence on how this emerging technology impacts capital markets.

This paper analyzes the impact of the Sarbanes–Oxley (SOX) Act on individuals’ decisions to invest their human capital in regulatory compliance. Exploiting geographic variation in SOX-induced growth in the demand for accounting labor and rich survey data on college students, we find that freshmen from regions with greater public company presence exhibit a more marked increase in the propensity to major in accounting after the enactment of SOX. Consistent with the financial incentives mechanism, we find that students respond more to SOX when they have stronger pecuniary preferences, when they are better positioned to seize the financial rewards of accounting, and when they have better access to information about SOX-induced changes in monetary returns to the accounting major. Finally, regions with greater public company presence exhibit larger increases in local wages and employment in the accounting industry.

Research finds that climate disasters have had minimal effects on banks’ performance to date, and it has devoted limited attention to how banks shape societal exposure to the disasters. This study addresses this puzzle and gap. Examining the share price reactions of banks affected by billion-dollar disasters from 1994–2024, we find that on average these banks lost market value around the disasters exceeding 10 percent of the estimated damages, with this percentage more than doubling during the sample period. We next show that banks’ county-level mortgage lending is positively associated with property exposures to disasters and FEMA appropriations when disasters occur. Finally, we show that banks open new branches in counties that experience growth in socially advantaged population, especially counties with high climate risks. Given accelerating climate change, property-casualty insurers backing away from climate-risky counties, and FEMA’s uncertain status, our evidence highlights growing climate-related costs for banks and society.

We study individual investors’ paid news subscriptions. Among individual investors, only 4% of individual-quarters include a news subscription, and 1.2% include a financial news subscription. These low rates mask substantial variation across news sources and over time. Within financial news, approximately 30% of aggregate subscription dollars are spent on crowdsourced news, with the remaining 70% spent on traditional financial news. Subscription dollars vary over time, with crowdsourced news at times matching or exceeding traditional financial news. We also find that subscriptions are correlated with capital market activity. Aggregated payments for subscriptions, particularly for crowdsourced news, are correlated with stock market valuation, trading volume, and investment. Similarly, within individuals, the association between subscriptions and investment is driven primarily by crowdsourced news: subscribing is associated with a $280 increase in quarterly investment. Overall, our findings highlight variation in individual investors’ news subscriptions and their correlated investment activities.

Form 10-K offers a setting for studying how users process complex, multi-layered disclosures: managerial narratives in the main file alongside separate exhibits, such as contracts and certifications, that provide unfiltered detail. Drawing on rational inattention theory, we investigate how users allocate limited attention across these components. Users typically begin with the main file and selectively access exhibits when the main file appears shorter, less readable, or less confident, indicating higher perceived information loss. This pattern strengthens for exhibits that offer more detail on topics discussed in the main file and among institutional investors and time-constrained users. Exhibit access persists beyond the initial filing window and increases around subsequent firm events, especially when external monitoring strengthens and event-related information asymmetry grows. Collectively, our findings underscore the active, discerning nature of user attention in navigating multi-layered disclosures and reveal the often-overlooked informational value of exhibits in Form 10-K.

This study investigates the effect of national security-related foreign investment screening laws on managers’ investment choices. These laws weaken takeover markets by granting regulators broad new powers to revise or reject foreign takeovers of firms in national security-related industries. I identify exogenous variation in national security-related foreign investment screening laws using the enactment of a U.S. national security-related foreign investment screening law known as the Foreign Investment and National Security Act (FINSA). Consistent with managerial entrenchment theory, I document that, following the enactment of FINSA, national security firms’ inefficient investment increases. Event-time tests corroborate and cross-sectional tests demonstrate that results strengthen with treatment strength. Results generalize to seven alternative investment efficiency measures. Stacked panel tests exploiting regulators’ staggered enforcement of FINSA across 66 industries over time between 2008 and 2021 further corroborate. Overall, this study documents the unintended consequences of national security-related foreign investment screening laws on managers’ investment choices.

We survey public company executives and directors to understand what audit clients want from their auditor in today’s regulated environment. Our results provide at least three important takeaways. First, executives and directors view elements of auditors’ service quality (e.g., timeliness of communications) as at least as important as auditors’ technical competence. Second, we find no evidence that stakeholders’ preferences for service quality replaces their expectation for technical competence. Third, we find that 57% of executives and 67% of directors feel they can very accurately assess audit quality after an audit’s completion, but we are unable to identify clear determinants of participants’ self-reported ability to assess quality. Our results highlight the challenges facing auditors as they attempt to please clients, protect shareholders, and comply with regulations, all while offering a product whose quality is inherently challenging for others to assess. Our findings motivate future research and inform regulatory efforts.

We document that firms vary in their timeliness of support for the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement following the death of George Floyd in May 2020, and that timeliness is an indicator of authenticity. We predict that firms that speak out quickly in support of BLM (via Twitter or their websites) have made more investments in diversity and inclusion, relative to firms that speak out slowly (via conference calls or annual reports) or that remain silent. Consistent with this prediction, quick -disclosing firms have greater workforce diversity, have boards with greater ethnic diversity, and are more likely to tie executive compensation to diversity and inclusivity. Furthermore, quick -disclosing firms increase their hiring of both Black American employees and Black directors relative to firms that stay silent. We also document that quick-disclosing firms are part of more supportive stakeholder networks. We develop an inclusivity index and show that firms with higher index levels are more likely to speak out on the Capitol Riots, the Asian Spa Shootings, and voting rights.

This paper examines the consequences of adopting ASC 606, a new revenue recognition standard, on revenue uncertainty and debt contracting, using a quasi-natural experiment surrounding its adoption. We find that affected firms experience an increase in revenue uncertainty, as indicated by both higher analyst forecast dispersion and absolute analyst forecast error. Consequently, the cost of debt rises for affected firms, as covenants are used less in debt contracts reflecting a decreased effectiveness of earnings-based covenants. The effect is mitigated by relationship lending. We also show that the decreased use of earnings-based covenants as well as the increased cost of debt dissipate over time, while the increase in revenue uncertainty persists. Our analyses document a costly transition toward a more principles-based accounting standard but also suggest that some costs are transient.

We examine how removing user anonymity affects social media’s ability to generate value-relevant information for the stock market. Using a difference-in-differences design that exploits the differential timing of adopting real-name verification policies by the two most popular investment-related social media websites in China, we find that content on the treated site becomes significantly more informative about future stock returns and earnings after the policy takes effect. This effect is primarily driven by continuing users who post more actively in the pre-period. Although these users post less after the policy, the informational content of their posts increases, suggesting greater prudence in expressing opinions. Our results strengthen for firms that attract regulatory scrutiny. Overall, our study suggests that real-name verification policies can discipline internet users and potentially improve the informativeness of investment-related social media, particularly in emerging markets where retail investors predominate.