Knowledge that Transforms

We present a new multi‐sector growth model that features nonhomothetic, constant elasticity of substitution preferences, and accommodates long‐run demand and supply drivers of structural change for an arbitrary number of sectors. The model is consistent with the decline in agriculture, the hump‐shaped evolution of manufacturing, and the rise of services over time. We estimate the demand system derived from the model using household‐level data from the United States and India, as well as historical aggregate‐level panel data for 39 countries during the postwar period. The estimated model parsimoniously accounts for the broad patterns of sectoral reallocation observed among rich, miracle, and developing economies. Our estimates support the presence of strong nonhomotheticity across time, income levels, and countries. We find that income effects account for the bulk of the within‐country evolution of sectoral reallocation.

A profit‐maximizing seller has a single unit of a good to sell. The bidders have a pure common value that is drawn from a distribution that is commonly known. The seller does not know the bidders' beliefs about the value and thinks that beliefs are designed adversarially by Nature to minimize profit. We construct a strong maxmin solution to this joint mechanism design and information design problem, consisting of a mechanism, an information structure, and an equilibrium, such that neither the seller nor Nature can move profit in their respective preferred directions, even if the deviator can select the new equilibrium. The mechanism and information structure solve a family of maxmin mechanism design and minmax information design problems, regardless of how an equilibrium is selected. The maxmin mechanism takes the form of a proportional auction : each bidder submits a one‐dimensional bid, the aggregate allocation and aggregate payment depend on the aggregate bid, and individual allocations and payments are proportional to bids. We report a number of additional properties of the maxmin mechanisms, including what happens as the number of bidders grows large and robustness with respect to the prior over the value.

Asymptotic justification of the bootstrap often takes the form of weak convergence of the bootstrap distribution to some limit distribution. Theoretical literature recognized that the weak convergence does not imply consistency of the bootstrap second moment or the bootstrap variance as an estimator of the asymptotic variance, but such concern is not always reflected in the applied practice. We bridge the gap between the theory and practice by showing that such common bootstrap based standard error in fact leads to a potentially conservative inference.

We conduct inference on volatility with noisy high‐frequency data. We assume the observed transaction price follows a continuous‐time Itô‐semimartingale, contaminated by a discrete‐time moving‐average noise process associated with the arrival of trades. We estimate volatility, defined as the quadratic variation of the semimartingale, by maximizing the likelihood of a misspecified moving‐average model, with its order selected based on an information criterion. Our inference is uniformly valid over a large class of noise processes whose magnitude and dependence structure vary with sample size. We show that the convergence rate of our estimator dominates n 1/4 as noise vanishes, and is determined by the selected order of noise dependence when noise is sufficiently small. Our implementation guarantees positive estimates in finite samples.

This study uses experimental economic markets to investigate the impact of risk and the potential for loss on managers' demand for audit quality. We posit that these two important contextual factors influence managers' audit quality preferences. We study these factors because they are ubiquitous to companies, and we focus on their influence on managers because managers continue to play a significant role in the auditor hiring process and we know relatively little about their auditor preferences. We predict that risk, the potential for loss, and their interaction will each decrease manager demand for high audit quality due to a desire to achieve greater reporting flexibility. Experimental results are consistent with our predictions; specifically, increased risk, the potential for loss, and to a lesser extent their interaction, significantly reduce managers' likelihood of hiring the best available auditor in the market. Path analysis indicates that this reduction in audit quality demand leads to increases in misreporting. Finally, we observe investors overpaying for assets to a greater extent when managers hire lower‐quality auditors. Our results show that the contextual factors of risk and the potential for loss, which are ubiquitous to companies, can reduce demand for audit quality, which can increase misreporting behavior and ultimately harm investors.

We examine the relation between low‐quality internal controls and audit fee premiums. Using a novel data set of audit hours and audit fees we find, consistent with the audit risk model, that auditors increase their effort (hours) owing to low internal control quality. We find that auditors also charge a significant fee premium to clients with internal control weaknesses. This premium is observed for severe internal control weaknesses and companies with low‐quality alternative governance mechanisms. The results are robust to multiple methods to address endogeneity, including company fixed effects, difference‐in‐differences design, and a propensity score‐matched sample. Taken as a whole, low internal control quality leads to fee premiums, which are a deadweight loss to client companies.

This study investigates why auditors leave public accounting and the consequences of auditor departures, both of which have been of great concern for audit firms and regulators worldwide. Using data from China and controlling for demographics, we find that audit partners and managers, auditors who generate more revenue, and auditors who provide higher audit quality have a lower likelihood of departure, while non–Big 4 auditors have a higher likelihood of departing public accounting. We also find that an audit firm is likely to lose clients when an auditor departs. Clients who stay with the same firm pay lower audit fees but with no drop‐off in audit quality after a signing auditor departs. In supplementary analyses, we also demonstrate that the determinants and consequences of auditor departures are different for auditors who leave the firm but not the profession (i.e., auditor turnover). Specifically, high audit quality is associated with a lower likelihood of auditor departure, but it increases auditor turnover. We also observe that audit quality is reduced for the clients who stay with an audit firm after highly skilled auditors depart for high‐visibility corporate positions. Our study provides insights that should be of interest to the audit profession, audit firms, and regulators.

Staggered boards (SBs) are one of the most potent common entrenchment devices, and their value effects are considerably debated. We study SBs' effects on firm value, managerial behavior, and investor composition using a quasi‐experimental setting: a 1990 law that imposed SBs on all Massachusetts‐incorporated firms. We find that relative to a matched control group of companies, for treated companies the law led to an increase in Tobin's Q, investment in capital expenditures and R&D, patents, and higher‐quality patented innovations, resulting in higher profitability. These effects are concentrated in innovating firms, especially those facing greater Wall Street scrutiny. An increase in institutional and dedicated investors also accompanied the imposition of SBs, facilitating a longer‐term orientation. The evidence suggests that SBs can benefit early‐life‐cycle firms facing high information asymmetries by allowing their managers to focus on long‐term investments and innovations.

Understanding the role of bank lending in corporate innovation is important to policymakers, practitioners, and academics. We provide new evidence on such a role by exploiting the implementation of SFAS 166/167, which removed the off‐balance sheet status of certain securitized assets of banks. The regulation affects bank lending and thus represents a credit supply shock to borrowing firms. We find that affected banks raise spreads and cut loan amounts after the regulation. Firms that borrow from affected banks reduce R&D investment and the number and quality of the patents they generate. The reduction is concentrated among firms whose banks experience more downward pressure on capital ratios and greater market discipline, and firms that are more dependent on external financing. Additional analyses reveal that information asymmetry between incumbent banks and outsiders with respect to borrowing firms prevent them from switching. The overall findings suggest that bank lending promotes borrowing firms' innovation activities. Policies that restrict bank lending are likely to hurt innovation of borrowers.