This study examines the spillover effect of constituency statutes along the supply chain. We posit that the enactment of constituency statutes in customer firms’ incorporation states, by removing legal obstacles for customer firms to cater to non-shareholders’ interests, builds suppliers’ trust and cooperation. Consistent with the notion that constituency statutes entice greater trust from suppliers, we find that suppliers make more relationship-specific investments in the supply chain after the enactment of constituency statutes in customers’ states, indicating a greater commitment to the customer. We also show an improvement in customers’ corporate social responsibility performance in the post-constituency-statute period, thus substantiating the claim that the constituency statutes increase customers’ stakeholder orientation. Cross-sectionally, we find the positive effect of constituency statutes on supplier relationship-specific investments is attenuated if the customer and supplier have more repeated interactions in the past, whereas the effect is more pronounced if suppliers produce durable goods. Overall, we provide novel evidence on the spillover of constituency statutes along the supply chain.

This study examines how PCAOB international inspections of non-U.S. auditors affect international Merger and Acquisition (M&A) outcomes. We find that clients of inspected auditors are more likely to become acquisition targets after the public disclosure of auditor's inspection report. We also find that deal completion is more likely and deal announcement returns are higher if deals involve targets with auditors for which inspection reports are available. Engagement deficiencies and unremediated quality control deficiencies identified in inspection reports weaken the positive effect of PCAOB oversight on M&A outcomes. Collectively, our results suggest that PCAOB oversight reduces information uncertainty in M&A deals.

Abstract Foreign workers have been an important part of the labor force in public accounting firms over the past two decades. In this paper, we investigate whether and why foreign workers influence audit quality. We find that audit offices with more newly hired foreign labor have a lower mean absolute value of discretionary accruals and a smaller rate of restatements for their clients. The effect is more pronounced for audit offices that face more resource constraints or require greater foreign expertise. The results of improved audit quality are robust to alternative measures of immigrant intensity and audit quality, alternative samples, and using different ways to address endogeneity concerns. Overall, our paper contributes to the literature by showing the impact of foreign labor in the auditing profession and provides public policy implications for the recent H‐1B visa debate.

Abstract Using a propensity score matched sample and a difference‐in‐differences research design, we find that stock price crash risk increases after a firm voluntarily incorporates clawback provisions in executive officers' compensation contracts. This heightened crash risk is concentrated in adopters that increase upward real activities‐based earnings management and those that reduce the readability of 10‐K reports. Based on cross‐sectional analyses, we also find that the increased crash risk is more pronounced for adopters with high ex ante fraud risk, low‐ability managers, high CEO equity incentives, and low dedicated institutional ownership. Collectively, our results suggest that the clawback adoption per se does not curb managerial opportunism but rather induces managers to use alternative channels for concealing bad news, which may contribute to a greater stock price crash risk; and the increase in crash risk is more likely in cases where incentives are strong or monitoring is weak. Our results should be of interest to regulators and policymakers considering the effects of clawback adoption on the investing public.

By employing two alternative measures of fundamental value, we reexamine the value relevance of accounting information over time. Consistent with some recent studies, we do not find evidence on the temporal decline in R 2s of conventional value-relevance regressions when the stock price is replaced by these measures as the dependent variable. Further, our results show that the divergence between fundamental value and the prevailing stock price (a) increases over time and (b) is associated with measures of noise trading and other arbitrage risks and costs. Additional analyses also reveal that proxies measuring the extent of noise trading increase over time. Overall, we do not find evidence that there is a loss over time in the value relevance of accounting information with respect to fundamental value. More importantly, we show that measures of price divergence are associated with noise trading as well as other arbitrage costs and risks (such as transaction costs and information uncertainty) that prohibit market prices from converging to fundamental values.

ABSTRACT The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) allows firms to redact information from material contracts by submitting confidential treatment requests if redacted information is not material and would cause competitive harm upon public disclosure. This study examines whether managers use confidential treatment requests to conceal bad news. We show that confidential treatment requests are positively associated with residual short interest, a proxy for managers' private negative information. This positive association is more pronounced for firms with lower litigation risk, higher executive equity incentives, and lower external monitoring. Confidential treatment requests filed by firms with higher residual short interests are associated with higher stock price crash risk and poorer future performance. Collectively, our results suggest that managers redact information from material contracts to conceal bad news. Data Availability: Data used in this study are available from public sources identified in the study.

We identify connected auditors as those who attended the same university as the executives of their clients. Using manually collected data from China, we find that connected auditors are more likely to issue favorable audit opinions, especially for financially distressed clients. Moreover, companies audited by connected auditors report significantly higher discretionary accruals, are more likely to subsequently restate earnings downward, and have lower earnings response coefficients. Lastly, connected auditors earn higher audit fees. Collectively, our evidence suggests the impairment of audit quality when auditors and client executives have school ties and the presence of social reciprocity derived from school ties.

Abstract Customer referencing is a strategy that firms can use to disclose their connections with reputable customers as a means of enhancing their own reputations. We study the capital market benefits of naming reputable nonmajor customers in firms' financial reports to provide empirical evidence on whether this form of customer referencing has important practical implications. We predict and find that firms enjoy a lower cost of equity when they engage in customer referencing in their financial reports, consistent with the argument that this form of voluntary disclosure increases investor attention and customer certification. In cross‐sectional analyses, we predict and find that the benefits of customer referencing are more pronounced for firms that (1) lack major customers or reputable major customers, (2) name customers whose reputations exceed their own, and (3) face higher competition. Overall, our study provides evidence that communicating certain interorganizational connections can generate capital market benefits for disclosing firms.

ABSTRACT We exploit the staggered recognition of the Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine (IDD) by U.S. state courts to examine the effect of trade secret protection on the amount of firm-specific information incorporated in stock prices, as reflected in stock price synchronicity. We find that after certain state courts recognize the IDD, firms headquartered in those states exhibit a significant increase in stock price synchronicity relative to firms in other states. We also find a significant decrease in the disclosure of proprietary information in the firms' 10-K reports. These results suggest that IDD recognition increases the proprietary cost of disclosure and, in response, corporate managers withhold more information. In addition, we find that the increase in stock price synchronicity and the decrease in the disclosure of proprietary information lead to increases in the firm's market share, cost of equity, and market-to-book ratio, suggesting that managers sacrifice capital market benefits for product market gains. Data Availability: Data used in this study are available from public sources identified in the study.