Knowledge that Transforms

The identification of disaster risk has remained a significant challenge due to the rarity of macroeconomic disasters. We show that the interbank market can help characterize the time variation in disaster risk. We propose a risk-based model in which macroeconomic disasters are likely to coincide with interbank market failure. Using interbank rates and their options, we estimate our model via maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) and filter the short-run and long-run components of disaster risk. Our estimation results are independent of the stock market and serve as an external validity test of rare disaster models, which are typically calibrated to match stock moments.

This study examines the impact of recreational marijuana laws (RMLs) on firm-level employment using an imputation-based difference-in-differences (DiD) approach across U.S. states. RMLs significantly reduce employment, particularly among firms with high-skilled labor, strong union presence, permissive corporate cultures, and in states with greater dispensary density. Alternative explanations—including economic crises, COVID-19, fiscal changes, labor regulations, and related policies such as smoking bans and right-to-work (RTW) laws—are systematically ruled out through a series of placebo and robustness tests. RMLs also reduce investment, sales growth, and innovation, suggesting that legalization introduces labor-related frictions with broad implications for firm performance and long-term dynamism.

In this study, we examine how achievement‐related tendencies are expressed in the professional auditing context, particularly through the interplay between the CEO and the audit partner. We use the facial width‐to‐height ratio (fWHR), a stable morphological trait widely applied in prior research, as a proxy for achievement drive. Using a sample of US audit partners from 2016 to 2019, we find that higher achievement drive is associated with enhanced audit quality, evidenced by fewer restatements and lower abnormal accruals. Auditors with higher achievement drive are also more likely to become industry experts, attain leadership positions, and achieve partnership status more quickly. Importantly, we find that high‐achievement‐drive audit partners are more inclined to assert dominance in negotiations, particularly when working with equally driven CEOs, leading to improved audit quality. Overall, our findings suggest that, when activated in auditing contexts, achievement‐oriented tendencies, as proxied by fWHR, are linked to higher audit quality.

Exploiting the staggered rollout of third‐generation (3G) mobile broadband networks across 40 countries between 1999 and 2012, we examine how technological progress affects capital markets. We find that the introduction of 3G networks is followed by a reduction in bid‐ask spreads and an increase in price informativeness. These effects are more pronounced among firms with lower institutional ownership, indicating that information access through mobile broadband networks disproportionally benefits retail investors. We further show that these effects are concentrated in countries with well‐functioning markets, as characterized by transparent accounting information, broad investor participation, and strong legal protections for investors. Taken together, our findings suggest that mobile broadband connectivity reduces information frictions and improves price informativeness. They further highlight the institutional conditions under which these benefits materialize.

We investigate investors' voluntary disclosure decisions under uncertainty about their information endowment. In our model, an investor may receive initial evidence about a target firm. Conditional on learning the initial evidence, the investor may receive additional evidence that helps them interpret the initial evidence. The investor takes a position in the firm's stock, then voluntarily discloses some or all of their findings, and finally closes their position after the disclosure. We present two main findings. First, the investor will always disclose the initial evidence, even though the market is uncertain about whether the investor possesses such evidence. Second, the investor's disclosure strategy of the additional evidence increases stock price volatility: they disclose extreme news and withhold moderate news. Due to the withholding of the additional evidence, misleading disclosure arises as an equilibrium outcome, where the investor's report decreases (increases) price despite their news being good (bad). These results remain robust when considering the target firm's endogenous response to the investor's report.

This paper examines the association between CEOs' prosocial tendency and their firms' likelihood of accounting manipulation. We measure CEOs' prosocial tendency based on their involvement with charitable organizations. We find that prosocial CEOs are less likely to engage in accounting manipulation, as proxied by material non‐reliance restatements and SEC or US Department of Justice enforcement actions. The effect is more pronounced when CEOs are involved with charities that directly aim to improve the welfare of others and when they face stronger incentives to misreport. These results continue to hold in analyses of changes in CEOs' prosocial tendency around turnover events. Taken together, our findings suggest that CEOs' prosocial tendency, a fundamental personal trait, plays a significant role in shaping the quality of accounting information.

This paper examines private meetings between company managers and institutional investors as part of the broader financial reporting environment. Using direct observations of 39 such meetings across four large, listed companies—complemented with the study of preparatory work and internal documents—the paper investigates how these meetings help build and maintain relationships between companies and investors. The analysis shows that the importance of these meetings lies not primarily in the exchange of new information but in the creation of familiarity, focused engagement, and exclusivity, which strengthen social ties and reinforce participants' positions in the capital market. Drawing on interaction ritual theory, the paper identifies three forms of ritual work through which these outcomes are produced: assembly work, conversational work, and bodily work. The study contributes to research on the social embeddedness of capital markets and suggests that private reporting meetings should be understood not only as informational events but also as relational mechanisms that shape access, trust, and network persistence.

Research has long recognized that institutional investors possess significant information processing advantages. Yet even these investors face limited‐attention constraints, implying that periods of distraction may attenuate their advantage. We examine the effects of a plausibly exogenous shock to institutional attention arising from the annual buy‐side‐focused Equity Research and Valuation (ERV) conference for Chartered Financial Analysts on institutions' information processing at earnings announcements. Validation tests using conference call data indicate that fewer buy‐side analysts are present on earnings calls during ERV conferences and that questions are shorter, consistent with the presence of substitute or backup analysts. In our main analyses, we find that buy‐side analyst inattention reduces information asymmetry among investors and improves liquidity at these earnings announcements, consistent with theory, and observe similar results for non–earnings announcement events. In additional tests, we document slower price formation, but also more profitable retail trading, during these periods. Collectively, we provide novel evidence on the market consequences of institutional inattention during key information events.

This study examines whether competition in the form of emerging threats from rivals' overlapping product strategies has explanatory power for future performance and volatility, beyond existing competition measures and firm life cycle proxies. We proxy for emerging threats using product market fluidity, which captures competitive pressures and instability arising from rivals' evolving product overlap. Specifically, higher fluidity (i.e., higher product market threats) is negatively associated with future profitability and operating cash flows and positively associated with the variability of future profitability and operating cash flows. We also find fluidity is negatively associated with future asset turnover, margins, and expenses, and only moderately positively associated with future sales, shedding light on the mechanisms through which product market threats manifest in future performance. However, capital market participants do not fully incorporate this information, leading to predictable future stock returns and analyst forecast errors. Overall, our findings suggest that the dynamism and fluidity in a firm's product market space convey valuable and distinct information to capital market participants.

I use downloads of regulatory filings by SEC employees as a measure of SEC attention and find that SEC employees are disproportionately less likely to review the filings of firms with names later in the alphabet. Additional tests show that alphabetical order determines a firm's priority when the SEC follows up on common shocks among peer firms and that the strength of the SEC's alphabetical bias does not vary with the intensity of resource constraints. Further, the SEC appears to be more surprised by the restatements of end‐of‐the‐alphabet firms. These results are consistent with a cognitive bias that leads SEC employees to pay more attention to firms at the top of alphabetically sorted lists. Last, using shocks to alphabetical order caused by firm name changes, I find that alphabetically induced increases in SEC attention are linked with lower future noncompliance, suggesting that the regulatory effects of alphabetical order are material. Overall, this study highlights the “human” element of regulatory attention.