Using the collapse of the junk bond market in the early 1990s as an exogenous shock to external capital, I document, in both difference-in-differences and triple difference designs, that speculative-grade firms that recognize economic losses in a timely manner experience a smaller reduction in investment following the collapse. The effect is more pronounced for speculative-grade firms with a low level of asset liquidation value. Using the excess bond premium as a proxy for fluctuations in the supply of capital, I also extend the generalizability of my findings to a broader sample of 84,421 firm-years over the 1972–2011 period.

Using the Credit Rating Agency Reform Act of 2006, we examine the effect of the credibility of mandatory disclosure by credit rating agencies (CRAs) on market feedback. We find an increase in investment-price sensitivity for firms affected by the act, and the increase is enhanced when managers have greater incentives to glean information from prices—when firms are exposed to multiple dimensions of uncertainty, have higher growth options, face more competition, have less informed managers, or have higher accounting fraud risk. Our findings suggest that the greater credibility of CRA mandatory disclosure improves managerial learning from stock prices.

Consistent with the notion that dividends are very sticky, Daniel, Denis, and Naveen ( ) report evidence that firms manage earnings upward when pre‐managed earnings are expected to fall short of dividend payments. However, we find that this evidence is not robust when controlling for firms' tendency to manage earnings upward to avoid reporting earnings declines; only firms with high leverage exhibit a statistically weak tendency to manage earnings to close deficits of pre‐managed earnings relative to dividends. We further report that the decision to cut dividends depends on whether reported earnings fall short of past dividends, but not on earnings management that eliminates a shortfall in pre‐managed earnings relative to dividend payments. Overall, our evidence suggests that firms that face dividend constraints are more likely to cut dividends than to manage earnings to avoid dividend cuts.

Many U.S. private firms choose either a financial statement compilation or review rather than the higher assurance provided by an audit, yet little is known about these choices. We explore economic aspects of private firm choice of less-than-audit levels of assurance applied to GAAP-based financial statements. We find that CPA fees more than double for each increment in assurance. Commonly used financial reporting quality proxies are higher for both reviews and audits relative to compilations but are statistically indistinguishable on average between reviews and audits. Cost of debt is significantly lower for reviews than for compilations and significantly lower for audits than for reviews. Finally, we find that assurance level choices are associated with bank debt, trade credit, and potential internal information reliability and control concerns.

The trade‐off literature asserts that managers weigh the direct benefits of tax avoidance against the associated nontax costs. This literature implies each firm has a unique optimal level of tax avoidance that balances these costs and benefits. Our study is the first to document how quickly the average firm moves toward its optimal level of tax avoidance. We find that the typical firm converges toward its optimum at a rate that ranges from approximately 69 to 84 percent over a three‐year period, depending upon model specifications. Consistent with asymmetric levels of frictions across the tax avoidance distribution, we find the speed of adjustment is greater for firms below their optimal level of tax avoidance than for firms above. We perform additional cross‐sectional analyses to provide insight into some of the frictions that prevent firms from adjusting completely to their optimal level of tax avoidance. We generally find growth firms exhibit slower adjustment speeds and provide limited evidence that both multinational firms and income‐mobile firms exhibit faster adjustment speeds.

We examine the effects of increased competition stemming from corporate tax rate cuts in foreign competitors' home countries on U.S. domestic manufacturing firms. We develop a measure of U.S. domestic firms' exposure to changes in foreign country tax rates and validate that the measure captures increased competition in the U.S. We find that, on average, U.S. domestic firms lose market power following declines in foreign country tax rates. We also find that, on average, U.S. domestic firms respond by increasing investment in research and development and capital expenditures and by improving total factor productivity. In cross-sectional analyses, we find the impact of foreign tax cuts is concentrated among U.S. domestic firms with low ex ante product differentiation. Taken together, these findings suggest that foreign country tax cuts escalate the competitive threat faced by U.S. domestic firms, and in response, U.S. domestic firms alter their investment strategies and/or become more productive.