Ambiguity attitudes have been prominently used in economic models, but we still know little about their demographic correlates or their generalizability beyond the West. We analyze the ambiguity attitudes of almost 3,000 students across thirty countries. For gains, we find ambiguity aversion everywhere, while ambiguity aversion is much weaker for losses. Ambiguity attitudes change systematically with probabilities for both gains and losses. Much of the between-country variation can be explained through a fewmacroeconomic characteristics. In contrast, we find massive unexplained variation at the individual level. We also find much unexplained heterogeneity in individual responses to different decision tasks.

To what extent do U.S. consumers change their purchase behavior or, in the extreme, boycott companies based on negative information about corporate tax activities? Practitioner publications and academic research identify consumers as a key corporate tax stakeholder. But we have limited empirical evidence whether information about corporate tax activities influences consumer actions. We undertake a comprehensive study of this question, triangulating across several settings. First, a representative sample of consumers suggests they rarely boycott in response to corporate tax activities. Next, an analysis of granular retail scanner data fails to provide compelling evidence of consumer purchase responses to negative tax news. An analysis of individual foot traffic at retail establishments around negative tax news again fails to suggest U.S. consumers change their shopping activities in response to negative tax news. The combined evidence suggests consumers do not meaningfully alter their purchase behavior in response to negative tax news.

In the absence of random treatment assignment, the selection of appropriate control variables is essential to designing well-specified empirical tests of causal effects. However, the importance of control variables seems under-appreciated in accounting research relative to other methodological issues. Despite the frequent reliance on control variables, the accounting literature has limited guidance on how to select them. We evaluate the evolution in the use of control variables in accounting research and discuss some of the issues that researchers should consider when choosing control variables. Using simulations, we illustrate that more control is not always better and that some control variables can introduce bias into an otherwise well-specified model. We also demonstrate other issues with control variables, including the effects of measurement error and complications associated with fixed effects. Finally, we provide practical suggestions for future accounting research. Data Availability: All data used are publicly available from sources cited in the text.

Theory argues that career concerns (i.e., concerns about the impact of current performance on contemporaneous and future compensation) encourage managers to withhold bad news disclosure. However, empirical evidence regarding the extent to which a manager's career concerns are associated with a delay in bad news disclosure is limited. Across multiple proxies for career concerns, we find that the extent to which managers delay bad news is positively associated with their level of career concerns. Then, we hand-collect data on a compensation contract that firms use to reduce CEOs' career concerns (i.e., ex ante severance pay agreements). We find that if managers receive a sufficiently large payment in the event of dismissal, they no longer delay the disclosure of bad news. Overall, our findings support prior theoretical evidence that managers delay bad news disclosure due to career concerns and suggest a mechanism through which firms can mitigate the delay. JEL Classifications: M12; M41. Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources cited in the text.

FIN No. 48, Accounting for Uncertainty in Income Taxes (FASB 2006), requires firms to disclose tax reserves and to record changes in tax reserves at adoption of FIN No. 48 as cumulative effect adjustments in stockholders’ equity. We predict that between the enactment and adoption of FIN No. 48, relative to historical levels, firms settle disputes more often to potentially decrease visibility to the IRS and release reserves more often to reduce scrutiny and increase earnings (as opposed to retained earnings). We analyze 2005 and 2006 10-Qs and 10-Ks for the 100 largest nonfinancial, nonutility firms followed by analysts. Between enactment and adoption of FIN No. 48, relative to historical levels, firms report more settlements with tax authorities and release reserves more frequently. In addition, firms with higher IRS deficiencies are more likely to settle disputes. Between enactment and adoption of FIN No. 48, firms increased earnings by releasing $4.4 billion of tax reserves, nearly equaling the $4.5 billion released at adoption.

This study investigates the effect of firms' adoption of SFAS No. 131 segment disclosure rules on the stock market's ability to predict the firms' earnings, as captured by the forward earnings response coefficient (FERC). The FERC is the association between current-year returns and next-year earnings. SFAS No. 131, effective for fiscal years beginning after December 15, 1997, arguably increased both the quantity and quality of segment disclosure. Consistent with the standard's intended qualitative effects, pre-131 multi-segment firms experienced a significant increase in FERC after adopting SFAS No. 131. Consistent with the standard's intended quantitative effects, many pre-131 single-segment firms began disclosing multiple segments, and those that did experienced an increase in FERC. However, pre-131 single-segment firms that remained single segment (i.e., were unaffected by SFAS No. 131) had no change in FERC, indicating that the increase in FERC for 131-affected firms is not due to some other event concurrent to the adoption of SFAS No. 131. These results are robust under numerous procedures that control for characteristics of the sample firms and their earnings, providing strong evidence that SFAS No. 131 resulted in an increase in stock price informativeness for affected firms. Thus, we provide the first empirical price-based evidence that SFAS No. 131 provided more information (about future earnings) to the market, as the standard's proponents have suggested.

Competitive elections are essential to establishing the political legitimacy of democratizing regimes. We argue that insurgents undermine the state’s mandate through electoral violence. We study insurgent violence during elections using newly declassified microdata on the conflict in Afghanistan. Our data track insurgent activity by hour to within meters of attack locations. Our results suggest that insurgents carefully calibrate their production of violence during elections to avoid harming civilians. Leveraging a novel instrumental variables approach, we find that violence depresses voting. Collectively, the results suggest insurgents try to depress turnout while avoiding backlash from harming civilians. Counterfactual exercises provide potentially actionable insights for safeguarding at-risk elections and enhancing electoral legitimacy in emerging democracies.

This paper reports the results of controlled experiments designed to test the Harris‐Raviv generalization of the Vickrey theory of bidding in multiple unit discriminative auctions. The paper also discusses further development of the theory—in a way suggested by the experimental results—to include bidders with distinct risk preferences.