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Non-GAAP Reporting and Investment

The Accounting Review 2024 99(2), 341-367
The wide-spread reporting of non-GAAP earnings suggests efficiency gains from doing so. By estimating a dynamic investment model, we examine the real implications of investors using both GAAP and non-GAAP earnings to value firms. When investors use the firm’s GAAP earnings only, the firm’s manager—who cares about current stock prices—underinvests, and his investment is sensitive to transitory earnings. Non-GAAP earnings can improve investment efficiency by adjusting for these transitory earnings, but can also hide inefficient investment by introducing opportunistic bias. Although non-GAAP earnings induce overinvestment, they dominate GAAP-only reporting. Counterfactual analysis reveals supplementing GAAP earnings with biased non-GAAP earnings increases firm value by 3.4 percent relative to GAAP-only reporting. Precluding bias reduces overinvestment and further increases firm value by 1 percent. Data Availability: Data are available from the sources cited in the text.

Diversity Washing

Journal of Accounting Research 2024 62(5), 1661-1709 open access
We provide large‐sample evidence on whether U.S. publicly traded corporations use voluntary disclosures about their commitments to employee diversity opportunistically. We document significant discrepancies between companies' external stances on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and their hiring practices. Firms that discuss DEI excessively relative to their actual employee gender and racial diversity (“diversity washers”) obtain superior scores from environmental, social, and governance (ESG) rating organizations and attract more investment from institutional investors with an ESG focus. These outcomes occur even though diversity‐washing firms are more likely to incur discrimination violations and have negative human‐capital‐related news events. Our study provides evidence consistent with growing allegations of misleading statements from firms about their DEI initiatives and highlights the potential consequences of selective ESG disclosures.