Examining the US Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, I find that facilities reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 7.0% after mandatory disclosure of facility-level emissions. A facility's prior GHG inefficiency predicts subsequent GHG emissions reductions, but only after public disclosure occurs,...

We examine whether bureaucrats with fixed salaries obtain high private returns. We digitize the financial disclosures of elite bureaucrats from India and combine this novel data with web-scraped career histories to estimate the private returns to public servants after bureaucratic reassignments....

Using hand-collected data on political contributions from undisclosed sources, we document novel stylized facts on "dark money" and its role in elections and politician type. Over the past decade, dark money has become a major source of campaign financing and currently comprises the largest...

This paper explores the role of language (tone and readability) in financial disclosures in detecting a firm's likelihood of violating the FCPA. Matching FCPA violators with a control sample of non-violators, we examine whether the tone and readability of management's 10-K filings can be linked...

Public firms provide a large amount of information through their disclosures. In addition, information intermediaries publicly analyze, discuss and disseminate these disclosures. Thus, greater public firm presence in an industry should reduce uncertainty in that industry. Following the...

Investors increasingly hold stock in multiple firms that compete in the same product market (“common ownership”). Taking market share from peers no longer maximizes shareholder value under common ownership, which incentivizes managers to implement less competitive strategies (Azar, 2016)....

Investors increasingly hold stock in multiple firms that compete in the same product market (“common ownership”), and this ownership structure is positively associated with voluntary disclosure. We posit that common owners want managers to take coordinated anti-competitive actions (i.e.,...

Earnings conference calls represent an important communication channel for investors to observe managerial behavior. We examine the impact of executive temperament using weather conditions at executive locations during these calls. Using a large sample of earnings conference calls from 2006 to...

We empirically study how collusion in product markets affects firms' financial disclosure strategies. We find that after a rise in cartel enforcement, U.S. firms start sharing more detailed information in their financial disclosure about their customers, contracts, and products. This new...

This study examines the costs and benefits of uniform accounting regulation in the presence of heterogeneous firms who can lobby the regulator. A commitment to uniform regulation reduces economic distortions caused by lobbying by creating a free-rider problem between lobbying firms at the cost...