We exploit the staggered introduction of CPA Mobility provisions in the United States to study the effects of spatial licensing requirements on the labor market for accounting professionals. Specifically, we examine whether the removal of licensing‐induced geographic barriers affects CPA wages and employment levels, as well as the pricing and quality of professional services. We find that, subsequent to the adoption of CPA Mobility provisions, wages of accounting professionals decrease, whereas employment levels are unaffected. The documented wage effect stems from smaller CPA firms, is more pronounced for CPAs holding senior positions, and persists over time. We also find that service prices decline and that this effect is concentrated in local CPA firms. Moreover, we document that the increased wage and price pressure is not associated with deteriorating service quality. Collectively, our results suggest that the removal of occupational licensing barriers has sizable effects on labor supply and service prices. Our findings inform the current regulatory debate on occupational licensing.

We study how the interplay of disclosure and regulation shapes capital allocation in reward crowdfunding. Using data from Kickstarter, the largest online reward crowdfunding platform, we show that, even in the absence of clear regulation and enforcement mechanisms, disclosure helps entrepreneurs access capital for their projects and bolsters engagement with potential project backers, consistent with the notion that disclosure mitigates moral hazard. We further document that, subsequent to a change in Kickstarter's terms of use that increases the threat of consumer litigation, the association between project funding and disclosure becomes stronger. This evidence suggests that consumer protection regulation enhances the perceived credibility of disclosure. We find the effect of the change in terms of use to be more pronounced in states with stricter consumer protection regulations. Taken together, our findings yield important insights on the role of disclosure, as well as on the potential effects of increased regulation on crowdfunding platforms.

We examine bankruptcy within business groups. Groups have incentives to support financially distressed subsidiaries, as the bankruptcy of a subsidiary may impose severe costs on the group as a whole. This is in part because, in several countries, bankruptcy courts often “pierce the corporate veil” and hold groups liable for their distressed subsidiaries’ obligations as if they were their own. Using a large cross-country sample of group-affiliated firms, we show that, by reallocating resources within the corporate structure, business groups actively manage intra-group credit risk to prevent costly within-group insolvencies. Moreover, we document that recent regulatory changes in the approval and disclosure of related party transactions are costly for business groups in that they constrain their ability to shield their subsidiaries from credit-risk shocks. Our study informs the current regulatory debate on related party transactions by highlighting an important cost of anti-self-dealing regulation.

Using a large sample of multinational corporations (MNCs), we examine the location of earnings management within the firm. We posit and find that MNCs manage their consolidated earnings through an orchestrated reporting strategy across subsidiaries over which they exert significant influence. Specifically, we find that headquarters' influence on subsidiary earnings management increases with the degree of subsidiary integration and the extent of earnings management opportunities. Most importantly, we provide evidence that MNCs exploit regulatory arbitrage opportunities arising from cross-country differences in institutional quality. We document that, in response to exogenous improvements in the quality of their home-country institutions, MNCs rebalance their reporting strategies by clustering earnings management in subsidiaries from countries with more lenient regulations. Taken together, our findings yield important insights on the drivers of earnings management location within the firm and highlight the need for better cross-country coordination in regulatory design.

We examine how investment professionals assess the usefulness of financial accounting information depending on their information acquisition objectives and preparers' earnings management incentives. We conduct a survey experiment based on face-to-face interviews with investment professionals and document two main results. First, we find that, compared with investment professionals assigned a firm valuation objective, those assigned a managerial performance evaluation objective assess accounting information as significantly less useful. Second, we find no systematic evidence that preparers' earnings management incentives negatively affect investment professionals' assessments of accounting information usefulness. To elucidate this second finding, we conduct a large-scale follow-up online experiment. Our results continue to offer no support for the effect of earnings management incentives on investment professionals' assessments of accounting information usefulness, irrespective of preparers' corporate governance quality. Instead, we find that poor corporate governance, by itself, reduces the usefulness of accounting information to investment professionals.