We predict that access to cross-border financing by the industrial sector reduces firms' reliance on domestic banks, thereby leading to lower rents for banks and greater competition in the domestic banking sector. We also predict that banks take on more risk to offset these lost rents and remain competitive. Using mandatory adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) to identify variation in cross-border financing, we find evidence consistent with our hypotheses. Additional tests verify that the effects emanate from the demand side (i.e., firms not relying on banks) rather than the supply side (i.e., banks not willing to lend to firms). Overall, we document how competition from overseas financial markets influences the domestic banking sector.

Our study introduces analyst/investor days, a new disclosure medium that allows for private interactions with influential market participants. We also highlight interdependencies in the choice and information content of analyst/investor days and conference presentations, a well-researched disclosure medium that similarly allows for private interactions. Analyst/investor days are less frequent, but with longer duration and greater price impact than conference presentations. They are mostly hosted by firms that already have opportunities to interact with investors at conferences, but whose complex and diverse activities make the short duration and rigid format of a conference presentation an imperfect solution to these firms' information problems. Analyst/investor days and conference presentations tend to occur in different quarters, consistent with their competing for the time and attention of senior management. When these two mediums are scheduled in close temporal proximity to each other, analyst/investor days diminish the information content of conference presentations, but not vice versa, consistent with managers' favoring analyst/investor days over conference presentations as a disclosure medium. JEL Classifications: D82; M41; G11; G12; G14. Data Availability: Data are publicly available from the sources identified in the paper.

We document the interrelationship of disclosure policy decisions among firms by providing evidence that the cessation of quarterly management forecast guidance by 656 firms (“stoppers”) during 2004–2009 is associated with a pursuant increase in quarterly forecasts by previously non-forecasting firms in the same industries (“free-riders”). Increased forecasting by free-riders is positively associated with the information loss in the industry (proxied by the number of stoppers in the industry, the strength of previously existing information transfer relations between stoppers and free-riders, and whether stoppers and free-riders are peer firms) and the importance of the information loss to the free-riders (proxied by analyst following and the existence of new share issues). Following the cessation event, free-riders' cost of capital decreases as a function of the extent to which free-riders immediately initiate quarterly forecasting. JEL Classifications: M41. Data Availability: Data are available from the sources indicated in the text.

We assess the role of both accruals manipulation (AM) and real activities manipulation (RAM) in inducing overvaluation at the time of a seasoned equity offering (SEO). Our results reveal that earnings management is most consistently and predictably linked with post-SEO stock market underperformance when it is driven by RAM; in particular, the opportunistic reduction of expenditures on R&D and selling, general, and administrative activities. Thus, overvaluation at the time of the SEO is more likely when managers actively engage in more opaque channels to overstate earnings. Our findings are particularly relevant because managers exhibit a greater propensity for RAM at the time of SEOs, even though RAM is more costly in the long run.

Previous theoretical arguments suggest that industrial diversification provides a co-insurance effect that decreases the firm's default risk. In this paper, we endogenously estimate a firm's segment disclosure quality and investigate whether the quality of segment disclosures significantly affects bond investors' assessment of the co-insurance effect of diversification. We document that bonds issued by industrially diversified firms with high-quality segment disclosures have significantly lower yields than bonds issued by diversified firms with low-quality segment disclosures. We also find that the negative relation between industrial diversification and bond yields becomes stronger when firms improve segment disclosures as a result of FAS 131. Finally, we show that high-quality segment disclosures are associated with lower syndicated loan spreads for a subsample of loans issued by large bank syndicates, which are more likely to rely on publicly reported segment information.

We document that insider trading is significantly higher than normal levels prior to the public disclosure of SEC comment letters relating to revenue recognition. Furthermore, insider trading is triple its normal level for firms with high short positions. We find a small negative return at the comment letter release date and a negative drift in returns of 1 to 5 percent over the next 50 days following the release. We also find that greater pre-disclosure sales are associated with a stronger negative drift. This evidence suggests that insiders appear to benefit from trading prior to revenue recognition comment letters. We investigate whether the delayed price reaction to comment letter releases is due to investor inattention. Consistent with this explanation, we document that comment letters are downloaded infrequently from EDGAR in the days following their public disclosure.

This study examines the tax avoidance behavior of firms prior to the issuance, and following the resolution, of SEC tax comment letters. We find that firms that appear to engage in greater tax avoidance are more likely to receive a tax-related SEC comment letter. We also find that firms receiving a tax-related SEC comment letter, relative to firms receiving a non-tax comment letter, subsequently decrease their tax avoidance behavior consistent with an increase in expected tax costs. Additionally, we document evidence consistent with other firms that do not receive a comment letter reacting to multiple publicly disclosed tax-related comment letters within their industry by increasing their reported GAAP ETR, consistent with an indirect effect of regulatory scrutiny on certain types of tax avoidance.