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...

Recent proposals for a more inclusive capitalism call for labor and minority representation in corporate governance. We examine the joint promise of labor and minority representation in the context of German works councils. The councils are a powerful form of labor representation that grants...

Audits by private, third-party auditors are frequently mandated to ensure compliance with regulations (e.g., accounting or environmental standards). We examine how such mandates shape the market for audits. In our empirical examination, we focus on one of the oldest and most prominent audit...

We study the effects of pay history inquiry bans on employers' pay offers and hiring practices. Using salary information on online job postings, we find that posted pay offers decline after the implementation of pay history inquiry bans. We also find some evidence that the number of online job...

We study the influence of middle managers (“supervisors”) on financial misconduct at financial advisory firms. Individual supervisor fixed effects explain twice as much variation in branch misconduct as firm fixed effects. Studying supervisors at different branches within the same firm-year,...

I study whether mandatory peer review affects CPA entrepreneurship—that is, CPAs' decisions to start, continue, or cease operating their own CPA firms. In an effort to promote service quality, CPA firms have to be reviewed by other CPA firms to meet licensing requirements. While this peer...

We study the consequences of a 2010 change in the investment adviser qualification exam that reallocated coverage from the rules and ethics section to the technical material section. Comparing advisers with the same employer in the same location and year, we find those passing the exam with more...

Using a dataset covering 3 million commercial borrower financial statements, we document a substantial, nearly monotonic decline in banks’ use of attested financial statements (AFS) in lending over the past two decades. Two market forces help explain this trend. First, technological advances...

We identify endogenously formed same-race audit pairings based on the estimated race of audit partners and auditee executives in the nonprofit sector and show that these pairings occur at a significantly greater than random frequency. Using within auditor-year variation, we find that same-race...

Audits by private, third-party auditors are frequently mandated to ensure compliance with regulations (e.g., accounting or environmental standards). We examine how such mandates shape the market for audits. In our empirical examination, we focus on one of the oldest and most prominent audit...