The accuracy of firm information disclosures and the efficiency of long-term investment both play crucial roles in the economy and capital markets. We estimate a dynamic model that captures a trade-off between these two goals that arises when managers confront realistic incentives to misreport...

This paper examines the impact of mandatory reporting and auditing of firms' financial statements on industry-wide resource allocation. Using threshold-induced variation in the share of mandated firms in a given industry, I document that reporting mandates facilitate ownership dispersion in...

Politicians frequently intervene in the regulation of financial accounting. Evidence from the accounting literature shows that regulatory capture by special interests helps explain these interventions. However, many accounting rules have broad economic or social consequences, such as their...

We examine two distinct forms of information bundling that can occur when a firm releases a restatement: “positive bundling,” the release of good news with the restatement, and “negative bundling,” the release of additional bad news. We use a triple differences testing approach to...

Politicians frequently intervene in the regulation of financial accounting. Evidence from the accounting literature shows that regulatory capture by special interests helps explain these interventions. However, many accounting rules have broad economic or social consequences, such as their...

In the presence of litigation facing suppliers, the supply-chain relationship is at risk. Suppliers with principal customers (dependent suppliers) have a higher concentration of sales to customers, and they are more at risk relative to suppliers without principal customers (non-dependent...

We use data from enforcement actions initiated under the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) to examine firms' incentives to pay bribes and their costs when they are caught. Bribery is associated with projects that are valuable even considering the expected penalties. For firms that are...

The report explains why accounting is not a purely mechanical activity, but is affected by the incentives of those involved in the accounting process and by surrounding institutions, which help shape incentives and facilitate and constrain managers' actions. It looks at the principal factors...

We develop and test a model linking the duration of financial fraud to information produced by auditors and analysts and efforts by managers to conceal the fraud. Our empirical results suggest fraud termination is more likely in the quarter following the release of audited financial statements,...

Free Cash Flow (FCF) was adopted in the late 1980s as a financial tool to evaluate the firm and its individual projects. We question the procedure of calculating the FCF where a significant portion of Current Liabilities is offset against Current Assets, thereby creating the hybrid asset Net...