Using alcohol, tobacco, and gaming consumption data and people’s attitudes toward these sin products to proxy for social norm acceptance levels, we show a strong interaction effect between social norms and financial incentives, which significantly influence the behavior of market participants....

We investigate a sample of 50 firm-events, identified in the "Global Research Analysts Settlement", in which analysts were discovered to have acted misleadingly ex post. In this setting, analysts' incentives caused them to issue public disclosures that differed from their private beliefs. We...

We evaluate an industry disclosure initiative designed to inform investors, the practice of providing information regarding investment professionals' backgrounds. Implicit in the motivation for this initiative is the presumed relevance of background information to investors seeking investment...

Prior studies have documented the asymmetrical behavior of selling, general and administrative (SGamp;A) costs (i.e., SGamp;A costs increase more when activity rises than they decrease when activity falls), and have explained this phenomenon primarily with economic factors. Drawing on agency...

This article provides evidence about the wealth change and redistribution effects of Section 404 of Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), which requires that management assess and publicly report on the effectiveness of their firm's internal controls, and that auditors publicly provide an opinion on...