Recruiting talent is a major issue for the accounting profession and is especially salient for small firms with limited resources and brand recognition. In this study, we examine the challenges small accounting firms face when recruiting from universities and the strategies they use to overcome them. Drawing on interviews with 34 stakeholders (primarily recruiting specialists and human resource managers), we develop a process model of small-firm recruiting and present evidence related to each phase: (1) targeting certain universities and students, (2) engaging in university recruiting activities, (3) extending offers, and (4) aiming to evaluate recruiting outcomes. Guided by theory, our findings reveal that small accounting firms develop organizational familiarity and image with students while navigating fatalism and balancing imitation and differentiation in their recruiting strategies. We conclude with a call to reconsider the “biggest is best” assumptions that dominate mainstream accounting research and provide suggestions for future research. Data Availability: Data were obtained from interviews.

Governments implement wealth transfers with different policy goals and distribution methods. Prior research examines the timing (lump sum/periodic) of transfers but fails to simultaneously consider payment delivery method (standalone/combined with other income). Based on the behavioral life-cycle model, we predict payment timing influences how recipients spend government transfers, but that this effect is muted when the transfer payment is combined with other income. In contrast to prior research, our experimental findings provide theory-consistent results and suggest recipients of a periodic transfer spend more of the transfer than recipients of a lump sum transfer, but only when the transfer is standalone and not combined. Our findings help to explain theory-inconsistent results of prior research and extend the literature on the behavioral life-cycle model and mental budgeting. Moreover, our results suggest policymakers can intentionally structure the distribution of government transfers to encourage household spending or saving consistent with policy goals.

Although rapidly evolving, quality control (QC) systems are a poorly understood determinant of audit quality. We interview 27 QC system leaders to understand how they navigate the challenges they face in changing QC systems. We find that many challenges—including obtaining buy-in, evaluating costs and benefits, and advancing proactive over reactive changes—are caused by conflicting demands arising internally. Consistent with institutional theory, our data reveal that leaders respond to conflicting demands by seeking partial conformity (e.g., negotiating among stakeholders) or by altering the framing of the demands (e.g., using scientific logic to legitimize a QC change). Interviews of eight QC system users complement and corroborate our main results and suggest opportunities for future research. Our study sheds light on how firms update QC systems and informs practitioners, regulators, and academics of the forces that shape the evolution of QC systems. Data Availability: Our data are not publicly available to preserve participant anonymity.

We test Le Play's (1875) hypothesis that the French Revolution contributed to France's early fertility decline by imposing equal partition of inheritance among all children, including women. We combine new data on local inheritance rules before the Revolution and individual-level demographic data from historical sources and crowdsourced genealogies. Difference-in-differences and regression-discontinuity estimates show that the inheritance reforms enacted during the Revolution reduced completed fertility by 0.5 children. A key mechanism was the desire to avoid land fragmentation across generations. These reforms closed the fertility gap between regions with different historical inheritance rules and crucially contributed to France's demographic transition.