Knowledge that Transforms

This study provides the first empirical evidence that the Federal Reserve (the Fed) systematically retrieves micro-level accounting reports to aid its understanding of the state of the macroeconomy. Using unique data identifying its direct access of corporate SEC filings, we show that the Fed tracks firms that are bellwethers and industry leaders, or that can engender systemic risk. The qualitative information in the Fed-accessed periodic reports explains the Fed’s GDP growth forecasts for up to four quarters, after controlling for contemporaneous aggregate earnings and other economic information. However, professional forecasts fail to incorporate such qualitative accounting information. In addition, this qualitative information is reflected in the tone of the ensuing FOMC meeting discussions as well as in Fed forecasts of key macro demand and supply factors. Overall, our evidence suggests important externalities of micro-level accounting reports, especially qualitative disclosures, on the central bank’s macroeconomic forecasts and, by extension, monetary policy. Data Availability: Data are available from public sources.

We investigate (1) how well a machine learning algorithm can predict one-year ahead effective tax rates (ETRs) and (2) which items in the financial statements and notes are most useful for these predictions. We compare our machine-generated ETR predictions with those from ETRs implied by analysts’ earnings forecasts and find the algorithm’s predictions are less biased, more precise, and explain more of the variance in future ETRs. We then use Explainable AI (based on Shapley values) to measure the usefulness of each disclosure item in the algorithm’s predictions. We find that while some tax-related items are useful, others offer minimal value. Using the machine learning algorithm’s use of information as a benchmark, we then further use Shapley values to examine which information is underweighted or overweighted by analysts. Overall, our results help inform standard setters on the relevance of certain tax disclosures in achieving the objective of predicting future ETRs.

We undertake the first empirical analysis of profit shifting by U.S. firms during foreign tax holidays. We show that foreign tax holidays have become a prevalent and powerful tax planning strategy among U.S. firms. We find that U.S. firms significantly increase their outbound profit shifting while participating in foreign tax holidays. However, we also find that profit shifting associated with tax holidays comes at the cost of increased tax uncertainty. Our results have important implications for policy making and for understanding firm behavior.

In a quasi-experiment with external (EA), in-house internal (IIA), and outsourced internal auditors (OIA) as participants in their natural roles, we compare auditors’ internal control evaluations in the presence of differing management reporting motives. Grounded in Organizational Identity (OID) Theory, we find EAs’ evaluations are more (less) lenient when management’s motive is less (more) self-serving. We provide evidence that management’s motives affect EAs’ evaluations because management is a conduit for EAs’ OID and because EAs adopt an affiliative protective orientation. In contrast, we find no evidence management’s motives affect IIAs’ evaluations or that management is an OID conduit for IIAs. Finally, we find that although OIAs and IIAs exhibit similar OID levels, on average, OIAs’ evaluations are more lenient than IIAs’. Our results clarify how auditors form OID, how it manifests into protective behaviors, and suggest EAs’ preference to rely on OIAs’ work over IIAs’ may inadvertently diminish audit quality.

We examine the effect of individual wealth taxes on dividend policy. Using a comprehensive sample of European public firms from 26 countries, we document that wealth taxes paired with substantial increases in stock prices are associated with significantly larger dividend payouts. This pattern is stronger among closely held firms, family firms, and firms with shares directly owned by individuals. We also find evidence suggesting that the dividends induced by wealth taxes have meaningful economic consequences; the announcement of dividends with a higher probability of being induced by wealth taxes elicits lower stock returns, and such dividends are associated with lower levels of subsequent investment. Overall, our evidence contributes to the rekindled debate on wealth taxes by showing that this type of taxation affects corporate financial policies.

We examine the effect of compliance frictions in reclaiming foreign withholding tax overpayments on foreign portfolio investment (FPI) using data on bilateral FPI around the globe and U.S. institutional investors’ foreign holdings. Exploiting variation in withholding tax overpayments for 36 investor countries and 110 issuer countries, we find that withholding tax overpayments adversely affect FPI because of the high compliance costs to international investors in claiming foreign tax credits. Cross-sectional tests further show that the adverse effect of withholding tax overpayments on FPI is reduced when compliance costs in claiming these overpayments from foreign countries are lower. Our results indicate that eliminating most of the compliance costs in the reclaim process by implementing a relief at the source mechanism could increase FPI by about 7.6 percent.

Analysts are recognized for their expertise in predicting industry growth, yet little is known about whether CEOs learn from analysts’ insights to guide investment decisions. Focusing on conglomerates where CEOs are underinformed about segment growth opportunities, we find that CEOs learn industry insights from analysts to adjust internal capital allocation. The extent of learning increases when analysts have closer proximity to CEOs or expertise in segments where CEOs face larger internal knowledge gaps. CEOs likely learn from analysts through private communications, as the insights learned are not yet publicly available, difficult to replace with other sources, and persistently impactful for firms. CEOs also exploit conference calls as another way to learn from analysts. As a result, learning analysts’ insights enhances firm value. We employ brokerage mergers/closures as a quasi-experiment to address endogeneity concerns. Overall, our study provides novel evidence on a learning channel through which analysts add value to firms.

Literature on equity analysts presents a conundrum: analysts are seen as influential market participants, yet researchers widely criticize them for their bias and inaccuracy. Studies drawing from economic frames struggle to explain this. Therefore, we develop a new conceptualization that positions analysts as actors operating in a social field. Drawing on a qualitative study involving 70 interviews with analysts and portfolio managers, we offer two broad insights. First, we identify long-term interpersonal and interinstitutional ties between buy-side and sell-side actors which contribute to social inertia in the field. Second, we illustrate how sell-side analysts’ social environment is dichotomous, pushing some to converge with consensus estimates, while encouraging others to diverge. Taken as a whole, our findings contribute to the accounting literature by enriching our understanding of the social and institutional forces that govern analyst behavior.

We examine whether initial public offering (IPO) registration disclosures expose firms to greater nonshareholder litigation risk. Using hand-collected data on lawsuits initiated at federal and state courts against IPO firms, we show that firms that submit their IPO registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission publicly experience a 16 percent increase in litigation risk between the registration filing and issuance date. Consistent with the public filing of the registration driving this heightened litigation risk, firms that file their registration confidentially under the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act do not experience such an increase in litigation risk. The effects of confidential filing are concentrated among business-initiated lawsuits, intellectual property/contract lawsuits, and potentially meritless lawsuits. We find no disproportionate increase in lawsuits after an IPO for confidential filers, suggesting that withholding information during the IPO registration period mitigates litigation risk.

A firm manager is concerned about both the firm value and the market assessments of his abilities. When investing in a project, he has private knowledge of his project-related ability that interacts with the project investment, and his general ability that produces a cash flow independent of the project cash flow. The concerns about the general (project-related) ability assessment create a signaling incentive to decrease (increase) investment. In the presence of underinvestment (overinvestment), higher-quality earnings information reduces (improves) equilibrium efficiency. When the manager issues an earnings forecast as an additional signaling device, the forecast is upwardly biased, and the equilibrium investment is smaller than that without a forecast. The latter is because the signaling incentive to decrease investment is strengthened. When the manager’s concerns about the general ability assessment are relatively large, he is better off by committing to no forecast. Novel empirical predictions about investment and earnings forecast emerge.