This paper examines the approaches accounting researchers adopt to draw causal inferences using observational (or nonexperimental) data. The vast majority of accounting research papers draw causal inferences notwithstanding the well-known difficulties in doing so. While some recent papers seek...

This paper investigates whether changes in Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) affect corporate investment decisions. Using a sample containing forty nine changes in GAAP, I find that changes in accounting rules affect investment decisions. I then examine two mechanisms through which...

This article provides a comprehensive assessment of private firms' financing sources and their relation with financial reporting practices. We consider debt financing (bank financing, leasing, and government guarantees), equity financing (family ownership, government ownership, employee...

This article provides a comprehensive assessment of private firms' financing sources and their relation with financial reporting practices. We consider debt financing (bank financing, leasing, and government guarantees), equity financing (family ownership, government ownership, employee...

We study the behavior of short sellers as informed market participants and examine potential sources of their information. Using a newly available dataset with high-frequency short sales data, we find evidence of significant increases in short sales immediately prior to large insider sales, but...

Slope coefficients in rank-rank regressions are popular measures of intergenerational mobility, for instance in regressions of a child's income rank on their parent's income rank. In this paper, we first point out that commonly used variance estimators such as the homoskedastic or robust...