This study examines the relationship between accounting credibility and firms' ability to fund their investments. Theory suggests that credible reporting resulting from external audits enables firms to attract external funds needed for their investments. The tests exploit monetary policy tightening that creates a liquidity shortage for banks, which, in turn, either requires banks to raise additional funds to restore liquidity or forces them to restrict their investments in the form of lending. Studying small non-public banks for which external audits are voluntary, I find that audited banks can better access funds during periods of monetary tightening than unaudited banks. As such, adverse liquidity shocks impede the lending of audited banks less. Overall, these findings present new evidence on how accounting credibility affects firms' ability to invest. Data Availability: The data are available from the sources indicated in the text.

How to address managerial short-termism is an important issue for companies, regulators, and researchers. We examine the effect of CEO contractual protection, in the form of employment agreements and severance pay agreements, on managerial short-termism. We find that firms with CEO contractual protection are less likely to cut R&D expenditures to avoid earnings decreases and are less likely to engage in real earnings management. The effect of CEO contractual protection is both statistically and economically significant. We further find that this effect increases with the duration and monetary strength of CEO contractual protection. The cross-sectional analyses indicate that the effect is stronger for firms in more homogeneous industries and for firms with higher transient institutional ownership, as protection is particularly important for CEOs in these firms, and is stronger when there are weaker alternative monitoring mechanisms.