This paper studies managers’ use of accounting discretion to deter entry. Using state-level changes in branching regulation under the Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act, I find geographically-constrained community banks increased their loan loss provisions to appear less profitable when faced with the threat of entry by competitors. Additional tests rule out alternative explanations that firm economics or regulators drove the increase. I complement my analyses with survey-based evidence. Findings from the survey confirm that banks prefer to locate in markets where incumbents have high profitability and low credit losses, and that banks use competitors’ financial statements to analyze competition.

This paper finds that the disclosure of supervisory actions by bank regulators is associated with changes in their enforcement behavior. Using a novel sample of enforcement decisions and orders (EDOs) and a change in the disclosure regime, we find that regulators issue more EDOs, intervene sooner, and rely more on publicly observable signals following the regime change. EDO documents become longer, more complex, and contain more boilerplate language. Our results also indicate that intervention happens sooner and more frequently in counties with higher news circulation, which suggests that regulators take into account the public perception of their actions. We evaluate potentially confounding factors, including the savings and loan (S&L) crisis and competition from thrifts, and find robust results. We also study bank outcomes and document that uninsured deposits decline at EDO banks in the disclosure regime, especially for those covered in the news. Finally, we observe that bank failure accelerates despite improvements in capital ratios and asset quality. Overall, our research provides new insights on the disclosure of regulatory actions.

We study credit access in informal economies where market institutions, such as financial reporting systems, auditing, and courts, are nonexistent or function poorly. Using the setting of a large bazaar in India, we find that community membership plays a vital role in access to credit. Wholesalers are more likely to provide credit and offer greater amounts of credit to within-community retailers, and are more lenient when these retailers are delinquent. Furthermore, wholesalers who lent preferentially to their community retailers pre-COVID are more likely to receive help from their community following the COVID-19–related income shock, particularly from same-community landlords and suppliers. Also, wholesalers with low endowments, those with greater within-community information flow about them, and those facing income shocks are more likely to provide preferential credit to their community retailers. Our findings are consistent with an indirect reciprocity mechanism explaining within-community credit flows.

We investigate whether improvements in banks' organizational capital and control systems facilitate increased loan origination to minority borrowers. We focus on bank supervisors' enforcement decisions and orders (EDOs) against banks and hypothesize that EDO‐imposed improvements in loan policies, internal governance, and employee training mitigate deficiencies in credit assessments and lending decisions that previously disadvantaged minority borrowers. We find that mortgage origination to minority borrowers increases following the resolution of EDOs, and more so for banks with stricter supervisors or more severe EDOs. Using a semisupervised machine learning method to analyze the text of EDOs, we find that such increases are higher for EDOs specifying revisions of loan policies, implementation of formal internal governance procedures, or more employee training. Overall, we find that EDO‐driven improvements in organizational capital generate unintended, positive social externalities that enhance access to credit for minority borrowers.

We examine whether an anticipated reduction in future repatriation taxes affects the amount of cash U.S. multinationals hold overseas. We find that the expected benefits of a repatriation tax reduction are positively associated with accelerated accumulations of global cash holdings once Congress proposed legislation. Additional tests examining domestic and foreign corporations, voluntary disclosures of foreign cash, and corporate payout behavior support our conclusion that observed increases in excess global cash are driven by changes in foreign cash. We also document that U.S. multinationals accumulating excess cash engage in complementary organizational and financial reporting activities designed to maximize expected tax benefits. Received December 7, 2017; editorial decision August 18, 2018 by Editor Andrew Karolyi.

We study the role of a relatively new type of external firm monitor, an on‐site government‐appointed Corporate Monitor, and assess whether such appointments reduce firms' propensity to violate laws. Using a sample of deferred and nonprosecution agreements, we first document the determinants of Monitor appointment. We find firms that voluntarily disclose wrongdoing and have more independent directors are less likely to have Corporate Monitors, whereas those with more severe infractions, mandated board changes, and increased cooperation requirements are more likely to have Monitors. We find such appointments are associated with an 18%–25% reduction in violations while the Monitor is on site, however, the effect does not persist after the Monitorship ends. Using a semisupervised machine learning method to measure changes in firms' ethics and compliance norms, we find that the reduction in violations is associated with changes in ethics and compliance that also do not persist. Finally, we document that firms under Monitorship experience a persistent reduction in innovation, highlighting a previously unexplored cost of these interventions. Overall, our results suggest that, although Corporate Monitors on site are associated with fewer violations, firms revert to previous levels of violations following Monitors' departure.