This study uses covenant violations to provide evidence on how firms make disclosure decisions in the presence of enhanced bank monitoring. Using a regression discontinuity design, I find that firms reduce disclosure following covenant violations. A series of analyses suggest that part of this decline in disclosure reflects a delegation of monitoring to banks by shareholders who consequently demand less disclosure.

Pressure from institutional money managers to generate profits in the short run is often blamed for corporate myopia. Theoretical research suggests that money managers’ shortterm focus stems from their career concerns and greater fund transparency can amplify these concerns. Using a difference-in-differences design around a regulatory shock that increased the transparency of fund managers’ portfolio choices, we examine whether increased transparency encourages myopic corporate investment behavior. We find that corporate innovation declines following the regulatory shock. Moreover, evidence from mutual fund trading behavior corroborates that the increased short-term focus of money managers drives the results.

Applying a difference-in-differences approach to explore variations in the timing of bank mergers in the U.S. over the last two decades, we document an increase in borrowers’ disclosure when their banks engage in mergers and acquisitions. The effect is stronger among borrowers more reliant on services from the merging banks and when mergers cause larger changes in banks’ monitoring and financing of borrowers. These findings suggest an information spillover effect from bank mergers to the public financial markets, and have implications for how changes in banking markets affect the availability of public disclosure in the stock markets.

The sensitivity of stock options' payoff to return volatility, or vega, provides risk-averse CEOs with an incentive to increase their firms' risk more by increasing systematic rather than idiosyncratic risk. This effect manifests because any increase in the firm's systematic risk can be hedged by a CEO who can trade the market portfolio. Consistent with this prediction, we find that vega gives CEOs incentives to increase their firms' total risk by increasing systematic risk but not idiosyncratic risk. Collectively, our results suggest that stock options might not always encourage managers to pursue projects that are primarily characterized by idiosyncratic risk when projects with systematic risk are available as an alternative.

Using the equity market liberalization of 23 emerging market countries between 1996 and 2006, we examine how the degree of competition for a firm's shares affects the price of information asymmetry. We find evidence of a significant decline in the pricing of information asymmetry as countries remove regulatory restrictions on foreign ownership. Our study provides novel evidence on the link between the degree of competitiveness of equity markets and the price of information asymmetry. The work also furthers our understanding of the economic consequences of foreign stock ownership.

Using a sample of firms that disclose the realizations of earnings used for determining covenant compliance in loan contracts, we provide direct evidence on the informational properties of earnings used in the performance covenants included in debt contracts. We find that the earnings measure used in performance covenants does not exhibit asymmetric loss timeliness and has significantly greater cash flow predictive ability than GAAP measures of earnings. We suggest that these results reflect the idea that contracting parties design accounting rules for performance covenants to enhance their efficacy as “tripwires.”

ABSTRACT Using a large sample of U.S. commercial banks from 1994 to 2019, we find that loan fair values are highly relevant for depositor decision making. A one‐standard‐deviation decrease in loan fair value performance is associated with more than 10% lower uninsured deposit flows than the sample average. Information in fair values about loan credit quality is quite limited and cannot account for the bulk of the relevance. Instead, consistent with models of bank fragility, the relevance seems to stem more from information on the decline in loan liquidation values, triggering panic‐based withdrawals motivated by (self‐fulfilling) expectations of withdrawals by other depositors. The findings inform the cost‐benefit tradeoff of reporting loan fair values.

Pressure from institutional money managers to generate profits in the short run is often blamed for corporate myopia. Theoretical research suggests that money managers' short term focus stems from their career concerns and greater fund transparency can amplify these concerns. Using a difference-in-differences design around a regulatory shock that increased transparency about fund managers' portfolio choices, we examine whether increased transparency encourages myopic corporate investment behavior. We find that corporate innovation declines following the regulatory shock. Moreover, evidence from mutual fund trading behavior corroborates that these results are driven by increased short-term focus of money managers.

Pressure from short-horizon investors can hurt investments in innovative, long-run value-increasing projects. We explore the efficacy of a commonly proposed tax-based policy tool to mitigate this problem: the imposition of differentially greater taxes on short-term capital gains vis-à-vis long-term capital gains. Using a panel of 30 OECD countries in which seven countries exhibit 21 changes to differential capital gains taxation over 1991–2006, we find that rewarding longer-term ownership through lower taxes is associated with greater innovation. The evidence adds to our understanding of the real effects of taxation on investor trading and informs the debate on the use of capital gains taxes to address corporate myopia.

ABSTRACT Firms’ use of accounting discretion to report a smooth earnings profile is commonly believed to be pervasive. We examine whether smoothing, at least partly, reflects managerial attempts to avert unhealthy pressures from outsiders who cannot fully disentangle the impact of transitory shocks from sustainable trends in value creation. Using variation in firms’ ability to hedge foreign currency (forex) exposure through derivatives, we find that firms are less likely to smooth earnings when they can better shield their business from extraneous forex fluctuations. Our findings inform the debate on discretion in accounting rules and illustrate how markets that facilitate efficient reallocation of risk can shape the informational properties of accounting output. JEL Classifications: F31; G32; M41.