We argue that contracting with the federal government involves significant proprietary information cost due to regulations requiring contractors to provide proprietary information, which may become available to outsiders via Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. We provide evidence by showing that firms become more willing to bid for government contracts after a recent Supreme Court ruling on FOIA (Food Marketing Institute v. Argus Leader Media) that improved information protection for contractors and that this effect strengthens when the contracts entail higher proprietary information cost for contractors. Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources cited in the text.

This paper evaluates the real effects of the new lease standard, ASC 842, on firms’ investment and operational outcomes. Using a sample of airline companies, we find that, subsequent to the promulgation of ASC 842 (2016–2018), public airlines reduce operating lease usage by about seven to ten percentage points relative to private airlines. The reduced lease usage is replaced by increased ownership, suggesting an equilibrium shift in firms’ investment due to changes in the cost-benefit tradeoffs associated with the operating lease classification. We also find evidence that the decline in lease usage hinders public airlines’ operational flexibility, as we observe more idle capacity in flights post-ASC 842. Facing excess capacity, public airlines seem to deploy their aircraft to shorter flying routes, raising the possibility of more wear and tear on the fleet. Overall, our evidence suggests that the new lease standard has intended and unintended real effects. Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources cited in the text.

How prior trust moderates investor responses to restatements is unknown. We examine how societal trust affects the changes in institutional investors’ shareholdings around a restatement. We consider two competing hypotheses based on the erosion of trust and confirmatory bias. We find the change in institutional investors’ shareholdings around a restatement is more negative for investors from high trust areas compared to low trust areas, consistent with an erosion of trust where high trust institutional investors view the restatement as a violation of trust. Further analyses show that our findings vary with the regulatory or economic environment, type of institution, and type of restatement. Our results are also robust to different tests that address endogeneity and use alternative societal trust measures. Overall, we contribute to the literature by examining the role of societal trust in a dynamic setting where investors’ trust-based beliefs about the credibility of accounting information are not realized. Data Availability: GSS Sensitive Data Files are not available from the authors. Persons interested in obtaining these data should contact the GSS at [email protected]. Other data are available from the public sources cited in the text.

We study firms’ decisions to withhold loan covenant details by focusing on a unique disclosure-related cost. Prior research documents the prevalence of tight initial covenants that are selectively relaxed in future renegotiations. This uncertainty in renegotiation outcomes can generate a disclosure-related cost because disclosing a snapshot of initial covenants with a high likelihood of violation could lead to harmful outsider reactions (e.g., trade credit cuts) to violations that may be eventually cured. We hypothesize and find that, when firms are likely to face tighter initial covenants and more renegotiations, they are more likely to withhold covenant details, particularly when under pressure from trade creditors. Our inference is robust to controlling for firms’ obligation to disclose (i.e., contract materiality) and future performance. Prior research has found that the precise covenant details of many loans are not publicly available. We are the first to offer a systematic explanation related to disclosure costs.

This paper examines the influence of labor market power in the audit profession. Using a dataset of online job postings, we confirm that audit offices in more concentrated labor markets have greater labor market power and exercise it in the form of higher skill requirements and greater required effort from their auditors, at similar or slightly lower wages. We then show that client firms of audit offices in more concentrated labor markets are less likely to restate their earnings and have lower absolute discretionary accruals. These findings are only present when employees have lower mobility across professions and geographies, consistent with audit offices’ power in the local labor market explaining the results. Collectively, our findings highlight the importance of labor market power in understanding audit quality. Data Availability: Data are available from the sources cited in the text.

We investigate the role of financial analysts in product quality failures. Relying on information about product recalls, we first show that analyst coverage on average reduces product quality, particularly when managers face greater short-term pressure from institutional investors. However, after identifying a subgroup of analysts who raise questions on product-related issues in earnings conference calls, we find that coverage by these “product analysts” enhances rather than compromises product quality. Firms with greater product analyst coverage are also more likely to retire low-quality products. Additional analysis demonstrates that product analysts help safeguard product quality by further probing into product-related matters and issuing more timely recommendation downgrades after firms announce product deficiencies. Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources cited in the text.

Using a Supreme Court ruling that rejected the use of “bright-line” rules previously relied upon in evaluating materiality claims, this study examines how heightened materiality uncertainty impacts audit pricing. We expect the heightened uncertainty to make it more difficult for auditors and clients to assess materiality and to reach a consensus on materiality assessment, which increases audit effort and engagement risk, leading to higher audit fees. Consistent with this prediction, we find that after the ruling, audit fees increase significantly for treatment firms in the circuits using bright-line rules in the pre-ruling period, relative to control firms not affected by the ruling. This effect is stronger when auditors have lower quality or lower industry expertise, and when investors have more diverse opinions. We also find that for firms audited by low-expertise auditors, auditor turnover due to auditor-client disagreement on materiality-related issues increases significantly for treatment firms relative to control firms. Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources cited in the text.