Knowledge that Transforms

We examine whether employee perceptions of managers and firms fall following tax avoidance news. Using S&P 500 firms and generalized difference-in-differences specifications, we find that tax avoidance news negatively affects employee perceptions of managers and firms. In cross-sectional tests, we find that (1) firms and managers in consumer-facing industries suffer larger employee-related perception changes from tax avoidance news compared to other firms, and (2) well-performing firms and their managers face smaller perception changes than other firms and managers. Overall, our results are consistent with tax avoidance news negatively affecting employee perceptions of managers and firms.

We examine how investment professionals assess the usefulness of financial accounting information depending on their information acquisition objectives and preparers' earnings management incentives. We conduct a survey experiment based on face-to-face interviews with investment professionals and document two main results. First, we find that, compared with investment professionals assigned a firm valuation objective, those assigned a managerial performance evaluation objective assess accounting information as significantly less useful. Second, we find no systematic evidence that preparers' earnings management incentives negatively affect investment professionals' assessments of accounting information usefulness. To elucidate this second finding, we conduct a large-scale follow-up online experiment. Our results continue to offer no support for the effect of earnings management incentives on investment professionals' assessments of accounting information usefulness, irrespective of preparers' corporate governance quality. Instead, we find that poor corporate governance, by itself, reduces the usefulness of accounting information to investment professionals.

Both sell-side analysts and the media are information intermediaries in capital markets. This study investigates the association between sell-side analyst research and information in firm-specific news coverage. More frequent recent news coverage is associated with stronger market reactions to analysts' research revisions, and primarily explained by soft information in news coverage. The primary result is robust to using both an instrumental variable and a quasi-natural experimental setting to generate exogenous variation in media coverage, alleviating concerns about endogeneity. In addition, using textual analysis, we document that explicit media references in analyst research reports are significantly associated with more frequent analyst revisions and stronger market reactions to revisions. Our study provides empirical evidence of analysts' assimilation of information from the financial press and their role in the efficiency of capital markets.

We examine whether dividend tax induced lock-in reduces idiosyncratic volatility. The 2012 Dividend Tax Reform in China tied individual investors' dividend tax to the length of their shareholding period, with short-term individual investors entering into higher tax brackets. We find that high dividend firms experience a reduction in idiosyncratic volatility, relative to low dividend firms, after the reform. The effect is more pronounced when high dividend firms have more retail investors and exhibit greater uncertainty. High dividend firms also experience a reduction in stock price crashes. Finally, with reduced trading by individual investors who are likely less informed, earnings announcements of high dividend firms trigger less trading volume during the event window post-reform, but enable more complete price reactions. We conclude that dividend tax induced lock-in, through discouraging short-term individual investors' trading, stabilizes the market and improves share price informativeness.

This paper studies equilibrium voluntary disclosures for a company financed with both debt and equity, where the firm's manager is compensated based on a linear combination of the market prices of the firm's equity and enterprise values (i.e., the sum of its values of equity and debt). Such compensation policies span “all equity” contracts, “all debt” contracts, and “all enterprise value” contracts. We show: (1) under both “all equity” and “all debt” contracts, increased debt always leads to reduced voluntary disclosure; (2) under “all enterprise value” contracts, increased debt has no effect on voluntary disclosure; (3) for all contracts that place positive weight on both equity and enterprise values, more debt leads to less (respectively, more) disclosure if the initial debt level is low (respectively, high); (4) increasing the weight on equity prices always induces less disclosure, so: (5) “all equity” contracts minimize disclosures, and “all debt” contracts maximize disclosures.

We investigate whether corporate insiders attempt to circumvent insider trading restrictions by using their private information to facilitate trading in economically linked firms, a phenomenon we call “shadow trading.” Using measures of informed trading to proxy for shadow trading, we find increased levels of informed trading among business partners and competitors before a firm releases private information. To rule out alternative explanations, we examine two shocks to insiders' incentives to engage in shadow trading: high-profile regulatory enforcement against conventional insider trading, and staggered changes to their outside employment opportunities. Finally, we document attenuated levels of informed trading among business partners and competitors when firms prohibit shadow trading. Overall, we provide evidence that shadow trading is an undocumented and widespread mechanism that insiders use to avoid regulatory scrutiny. Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources cited in the text.

This study examines whether financial accounting standards moderate the effectiveness of tax policy. Specifically, we examine whether myopic managers' focus on short-term financial reporting reduces the effectiveness of tax subsidies that incentivize innovation. We employ a novel setting, the issuance of Financial Interpretation No. 48 (FIN 48), which changed the financial reporting for some important, yet uncertain, tax incentives to innovate. For firms most affected by the standard change, we find evidence of reduced investment in innovation, reduced sensitivity of investment to tax incentives, and reduced future innovative output. Consistent with earnings myopia, we find the effect is more pronounced in firms with higher levels of transient institutional ownership and newly vesting equity compensation. These results indicate financial reporting myopia has real effects on innovation and can reduce tax policy effectiveness. The results further suggest that tax policymakers should consider both financial reporting and cash flow incentives in designing policy.

We examine the relation between accounting quality and debt concentration in corporate capital structures (i.e., firms' tendency to rely predominantly on only a few types of debt). Motivated by theoretical and empirical research that supports a strong link between debt concentration and creditors' coordination costs and the importance of accounting quality in reducing these costs, we hypothesize that firms with higher accounting quality have less concentrated debt structures. Measuring accounting quality with a comprehensive index based on the occurrence of material internal control weaknesses, accounting restatements, SEC AAERs, and firms' reliance on small auditors, we find that higher accounting quality is indeed associated with less concentrated debt structures. This relation is stronger for firms with higher default risk, as the probability that creditors need to coordinate is higher, and for firms with lower liquidation values, as creditor coordination to avoid liquidation is more important. Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources cited in the text.

We investigate whether U.S. multinational corporations shift income overseas to the point of recording domestic pretax earnings around zero. We label firms with near-zero domestic earnings “Small” firms, and present evidence that Small captures targeted income shifting that minimizes worldwide and domestic current taxes. Because shifting essentially all income out of the U.S. represents a very aggressive form of international tax planning, Small firms represent an important margin for understanding the income shifting of U.S. MNCs. We find that firms facing tax incentives to shift income and firms with greater income shifting ability are more likely to report near-zero domestic earnings. In addition, investors value the earnings of Small firms higher than that of other U.S. multinational firms, conditional on overall profitability, suggesting that, on average, investors hold a positive view of income shifting to the point of recording domestic earnings around zero. Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources cited in the text.

Relying on the size of partner signatures in audit reports in Taiwan to measure their narcissism, we find that audit quality rises with partner narcissism. Our analysis also implies that changes in audit quality are positively associated with changes in partner narcissism stemming from mandatory partner rotation. We also find that the impact of partner narcissism on audit quality only manifests when auditor independence is more likely to be compromised, although it does not vary with engagement complexity. These results suggest that partner narcissism improves audit quality mainly through increased auditor independence, rather than auditor competence. Additionally, we document that although partner narcissism has no perceptible impact on the incidence of Type I going concern reporting errors, it is negatively associated with the probability of making a Type II error, implying that more narcissistic partners are less likely to succumb to client pressure to issue opportunistic reports. Data Availability: Data are available from public sources as identified in the text.