Abstract We investigate how firms' use of derivatives impacts voluntary disclosure and offer four main findings. First, we find that when firms begin using derivative instruments, they increase the frequency of management earnings forecasts. Second, using path analysis, we find a direct link between derivative usage and forecast frequency, as well as an indirect link through reduced earnings volatility. Third, we find that CEOs with more pronounced career concerns increase forecast frequency only when derivatives make earnings easier to forecast and find no evidence that investor demand drives the decision to provide a forecast. These results suggest that the primary mechanism for the association between derivative usage and forecast frequency is a reduction in the manager's costs of providing the forecasts. Finally, we find that the majority of derivative‐induced forecasts are uninformative to capital market participants, especially after FAS 161 provided the necessary underlying data to understand how firms use derivatives. Overall, we provide the first empirical evidence that firms that use derivatives issue more management forecasts, but we also find that these incremental forecasts are largely uninformative and appear driven by managerial career concerns.

Abstract Although information technology (IT) plays an essential role in financial reporting, many companies today lack sufficient human capabilities to utilize IT competently. We examine the association between a firm's access to IT‐capable labor and financial reporting quality (FRQ). We proxy for access to IT‐capable labor using workforce measures in the metropolitan statistical area (MSA) where the firm operates, including (1) the number of IT‐related college degrees relative to the total active workforce, (2) the level of education of IT graduates, (3) the income level of IT graduates, and (4) a composite measure. We find that firms in MSAs with a higher IT‐competent labor force are associated with fewer financial reporting misstatements and internal control issues. This study contributes to the emerging literature stream examining the influence of geographic labor characteristics on firm‐level outcomes and the research on the impact of IT capability on financial reporting processes. We also inform the current movement of integrating IT knowledge into the education curriculum.

We examine the link between board gender diversity and managerial ability to transform corporate resources into revenue. Drawing on a sample of U.S firms during the period 2001–2016, we find a positive and economically meaningful association between female directors on boards and managerial ability, particularly when female directors are in monitoring roles on the board. The documented effect is stronger when using a tenure weighted measure of female representation on boards; and more pronounced for firms that have three or more women on the board of directors, in line with the critical mass hypothesis. We uncover that critical mass of female directors in monitoring roles is particularly conducive to enhancing managerial ability. Our channel analysis tests further reveal a distinctive tendency of firms with more gender diverse boards to shape the human capital of the firm by promoting managers with more generalist managerial skills. We find consistent results when we employ propensity score matching estimates and difference-in-differences using sudden deaths of female directors as a potential shock to address endogeneity concerns. We discuss implications for theory and policy.

This paper compares outcomes from informally negotiated oil and gas leases to those awarded via centralized auction. We focus on Texas, where legislative decisions in the early twentieth century assigned thousands of proximate parcels to different mineral allocation mechanisms. We show that during the fracking boom, which began unexpectedly decades later, auctioned leases generated at least 55 percent larger up-front payments and 40 percent more output than negotiated leases did. These results suggest large potential gains from employing centralized, formal mechanisms in markets that traditionally allocate in an unstructured fashion, including the broader $3 trillion market for privately owned minerals. (JEL D44, L71, Q35)

ABSTRACT This study examines the role of information transparency in facilitating peer firms' investment in follow‐on innovation. We capture information transparency with both textual and numerical information disclosed in 10‐Ks. Using patent citations to proxy for investment in follow‐on innovation, we predict and find a positive association between transparency at the knowledge source and follow‐on innovation. We further show that the effect of information transparency varies with the degree of uncertainty around technological innovation. Thus, the evidence suggests that information transparency facilitates investment in follow‐on innovation by resolving uncertainty associated with investment in technological innovation. An analysis using the cited firms' going‐private decision as a negative shock to information transparency confirms the significant effect of a cited firm's disclosure on its decision to invest in follow‐on innovation. Our study contributes to the literature on the positive externalities of peer‐firm disclosures and highlights the important role of information transparency in shaping innovation investment decisions.

We combine personnel records of the United States federal bureaucracy from 1997 to 2019 with administrative voter registration data to study how ideological alignment between politicians and bureaucrats affects turnover and performance. We document significant partisan cycles and turnover among political appointees. By contrast, we find no political cycles in the civil service. At any point in time, a sizable share of bureaucrats is ideologically misaligned with their political leaders. We study the performance implications of this misalignment for the case of procurement officers. Exploiting presidential transitions as a source of “within‐bureaucrat” variation in political alignment, we find that procurement contracts overseen by misaligned officers exhibit greater cost overruns and delays. We provide evidence consistent with a general “morale effect,” whereby misaligned bureaucrats are less motivated to pursue the organizational mission. Our results thus help to shed some of the first light on the costs of ideological misalignment within public organizations.

Abstract We quantify the immediate net effect of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) on the tax burden of corporate profits for public US corporations. We find similar reductions in effective tax rates for domestic and multinational firms, yet the entirety of multinational tax savings stemmed from tax savings on their domestic, not foreign, earnings. We find no significant change in the federal tax burden on foreign earnings neither on average norspecifically for firms most likely to be subject to new anti‐abuse provisions. We find some evidence that firms not targeted by anti‐abuse provisions saw reductions in their federal tax burden on foreign income. Overall, while the tax burden on domestic income decreased significantly, our findings suggest the tax burden on the foreign earnings of US multinationals is largely unaffected despite the overhaul of the international tax system. Importantly for US multinationals' investment decisions, while foreign income was heavily tax‐favored prior to tax reform, we find that foreign and domestic incomes are similarly taxed after TCJA enactment.

SEC Rule10b5-1 plans are intended to limit the ability of insiders to trade opportunistically. We study insider stock sales by CEOs both under and outside of these plans. While both groups exhibit opportunism, this behavior is more limited in plan sales and non-plan sales in well-governed firms. Furthermore, opportunism in plan sales is greater for transactions representing a larger fraction of the CEO's firm-related wealth. CEOs can circumvent the intent of Rule 10b5-1 by exercising their discretion over financial reporting and real earnings management and appear to benefit from material nonpublic information by selectively cancelling plans or using limit orders.

Abstract We study the effect of dealer exit on prices and quantities in a model of an over-the-counter market featuring a core-periphery network with bilateral trading costs. The model is calibrated using regulatory data on the entire U.S. credit default swap (CDS) market between 2010 and 2013. Prices depend crucially on the risk-bearing capacity of core dealers, yet unlike standard models featuring a dealer sector, we allow for heterogeneity in dealer risk-bearing capacity. This heterogeneity is quantitatively important. Depending on how well dealers share risk, the exit of a single dealer can cause credit spreads to rise by 8 % to 24%.