Knowledge that Transforms

ABSTRACT This study examines a new form of initial public offerings, “supercharged” IPOs, where a firm-organized pre-IPO as a pass-through entity undergoes a series of transactions that steps-up the adjusted tax basis of the IPO firm's assets. This step-up imposes tax liabilities on pre-IPO owners, but also creates significant future tax benefits for the firm; the average anticipated deferred tax asset is $486 million ($13 per share) for our sample of supercharged IPO firms. Pursuant to tax receivable agreements, supercharged IPO firms pay a large portion of these tax benefits to pre-IPO owners as they are realized in the future. Future firm performance must be sufficiently strong for the IPO firm and the pre-IPO owners to realize the future tax benefits created by the supercharged transaction structure. We hypothesize and provide evidence of higher IPO offer prices and stronger future performance for supercharged IPO firms relative to traditional IPO firms. JEL Classifications: G14; G32; G34; H25.

ABSTRACT Because internal control audits never existed before the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), and these audits simultaneously became mandatory for all U.S. accelerated filer companies, it has been difficult to assess the extent of investor demand for these audits. To understand whether investors demand internal control audits for these large companies, we exploit a regulatory exemption that permits companies to exclude acquired operations from an internal control audit. Using this voluntary setting, we find that investors react negatively if a company excludes acquired operations from their internal control audit. This negative reaction is larger when more of the company's operations are excluded from audit and when there is greater information uncertainty. Further, companies that exclude acquired operations from internal control audits are more likely to have a subsequent restatement. Collectively, these findings are consistent with investors perceiving value in (i.e., demanding) internal control audits for large U.S. public companies. JEL Classifications: M41; M42.

ABSTRACT Prior research finds that agents who are compensated on an imperfect measure of performance tend to distort their operational decisions and believe that the measure is more reflective of reality than it actually is (i.e., they surrogate). I find that agents distort decisions less and surrogate less when they can provide unverifiable narrative explanations for their actions. In my experiment, experienced chess players place bets on and write explanations about in-progress chess games. I manipulate whether participants give their explanations to their boss (who allocates a subjective bonus) when working as an agent. Participants who give explanations are more likely to make bets that reflect all dimensions of a chess position, rather than making bets that favor only the objective measure. They are also less likely to surrogate and are more likely to write about unmeasurable aspects of the games when subsequently making bets on their own behalf.

ABSTRACT This study sheds light on the extent to which the use of operating leases depends on reporting incentives, such as understating liabilities, and non-reporting incentives that partly arise from the overlap between accounting, bankruptcy, and tax laws, such as increasing financing capacity and flexibility. We provide evidence that expanding financing capacity, accommodating volatile operations, and maximizing the present value of tax deductions are all important drivers of leasing decisions. Our findings suggest that capital markets and contracting-based reporting incentives have little influence on operating lease use. In particular, we find weak evidence that firms increase operating leases in advance of issuing equity, and no evidence that firms use operating leases to window-dress in advance of issuing debt, to avoid debt covenant violations, for compensation purposes, or to paint a better picture on an ongoing basis. These findings are consistent with reporting incentives playing a second-order role in leasing decisions. JEL Classifications: G32; G33; K34; M41.

ABSTRACT We examine the relation between managers' personal income tax rates and their corporate investment decisions. Using plausibly exogenous variation in federal and state tax rates, we find a positive relation between managers' personal tax rates and their corporate risk-taking. Moreover—and consistent with our theoretical predictions—we find that this relation is stronger among firms with investment opportunities that have a relatively high rate of return per unit of risk, and stronger among CEOs who have a relatively low marginal disutility of risk. Importantly, our results are unique to senior managers' tax rates––we do not find similar relations for middle-income tax rates. Collectively, our findings provide evidence that managers' personal income taxes influence their corporate risk-taking decisions. JEL Classifications: G30; G32; G38; H24; H32. Data Availability: Data are available from the sources cited in the text. Data on manager tax rates used in this paper are available at: http://acct.wharton.upenn.edu/∼dtayl/.

ABSTRACT I examine whether analysts' tax forecasts are informative to investors and whether analysts' tax forecasts impact firm behavior. Using I/B/E/S data from 2002–2014, I find that investors utilize both analysts' pre- and after-tax earnings forecasts in evaluating firm performance, indicating analysts' tax forecasts are value-relevant. Furthermore, evidence that investors discount earnings management through the income tax expense is limited to firms with tax forecast coverage. In examining the impact of analysts' tax forecasts on firm behavior, I find analysts' tax forecast coverage is positively associated with quantitative and qualitative tax footnote disclosure. The results suggest that analysts' tax forecasts are value-relevant and that analysts' tax coverage impacts firm decisions related to the income tax expense account. This evidence informs academics and practitioners as to the role of analysts' tax forecasts.

ABSTRACT In this paper, we analyze the social value of accounting objectivity in maintaining financial stability. Building on an early influential accounting study by Ijiri and Jaedicke (1966), we operationalize two informational properties, accuracy (free of collective bias) and objectivity (degree of consensus), in a correlated information structure and embed them into a model of runs on financial institutions. We show that when compared with the accuracy property, the objectivity property exhibits an advantage in mitigating inefficient panic-based runs. In fact, it is possible that improving objectivity discourages such runs, whereas improving accuracy encourages them. Our model also sheds light on the design of optimal accounting systems to enhance objectivity. We find that to generate a more objective accounting report, accounting systems should be designed to be less vulnerable to intentional managerial intervention.

ABSTRACT This paper examines whether investor relations (IR) officers provide value by facilitating the assimilation of firm information by the market. We find that firms with IR officers have lower stock price volatility, lower analyst forecast dispersion, higher analyst forecast accuracy, and quicker price discovery, consistent with IR officers aiding market participants in their assimilation of firm information. We also show that our findings are stronger for firms with longer-tenured IR officers. Finally, we find that when firms transition from a long-tenured IR officer to a new IR officer, stock price volatility increases, analyst forecasts become more disperse and less accurate, and the price discovery process slows, despite no significant change in the firm's disclosures, media coverage, or performance around the turnover. Collectively, these findings suggest that in-house IR officers, particularly those with greater experience, help facilitate information assimilation by the market, which has positive market effects. JEL Classifications: G14; M40; M41.

ABSTRACT We use experimental economic markets to examine the impact of changing institutional design features on audit quality. Specifically, we manipulate auditors' economic accountability to managers by altering who hires the auditor—a manager or an independent third party—and auditors' psychological accountability to investors by explicitly stating that the auditor is hired on the investors' behalf. Our design shifts auditors' accountability from managers, who have directional goal preferences, to investors, who prefer judgment accuracy. We find that removing auditors' economic accountability to managers and replacing it with psychological accountability to investors significantly increases audit quality. This increase in audit quality occurs despite the independent third party randomly hiring auditors. In an additional treatment, we incorporate auditor accuracy into the third-party hiring algorithm and find even higher audit quality. Our results suggest that altering auditors' accountability relationships can significantly enhance audit quality. Data Availability: The laboratory market data used in this study are available from the authors upon request.

ABSTRACT Using a set of proprietary records, we examine who consumes quarterly earnings conference calls and under which circumstances the calls are consumed. While there is significant interest in calls by institutional investors and sell-side analysts, we find that investors who do not hold a position in the firm are a leading consumer. We show that buy-side non-holders who consume calls are more likely to hold positions in competitors and to purchase the stock in the future. In addition, many investors who hold large positions only consume calls periodically. We also document a benefit of consuming calls by finding that the consumption of calls is associated with more informed trading decisions. Overall, our investigation illuminates the actual consumption of conference calls by different consumers and the potential benefits of consuming additional firm disclosures.