We provide the first evidence of systematic bias among an emerging type of credit rating agency that relies on subscriptions from institutional clients as its primary source of revenue. Using data on Egan-Jones (EJR) ratings, a subscriber-paid rating agency, we show that EJR issues more...

We examine a comprehensive set of investigations by the SEC’s Division of Enforcement offices to provide evidence on the consequences of these office’s busyness on the formal investigation process. We find that higher office case backlog decreases the likelihood of an investigation into a...

We investigate whether the adoption of the Current Expected Credit Loss (CECL) standard by U.S. banks affects three properties of financial analysts’ loan loss provision forecasts: accuracy, dispersion, and coverage. We find that CECL adoption is associated with reduced accuracy and coverage,...

We examine whether rating agencies act defensively toward issuers with a higher likelihood of default. We find that agencies’ qualitative soft rating adjustments are more accurate as issuers’ default risk grows, as evidenced by the adjustments leading to lower type I and type II error rates...

This study investigates whether corporate culture of a firm impacts its tax shelter behavior. We use novel machine learning methodology to measure corporate culture of a firm. The analyses show that firms with stronger corporate culture are more likely to engage in tax shelter behavior and...