Building on Desai and Dharmapala’s (2006) complementarity theory on the relation between tax avoidance and insider diversion, we contribute to international research by examining the importance of tax avoidance to equity pricing, and the role that institutional environments play in shaping...

We investigate the link between foreign competition and corporate tax planning. We find that a one standard deviation increase in import competition leads to a reduction of 9% in firms’ effective tax rates relative to standard levels. Further, we document that our evidence is robust to a...

We examine whether auditors accommodate the information needs of some clients by sharing their private information learned from other clients in their portfolio. In analyzing the setting where the forecast-issuing brokerage houses and the forecasted companies engage the same auditor, we find...

We examine the role that an audit firm’s national office plays in shaping its practice offices’ economic outcomes. Given that national offices provide superior support, monitoring, and advising to physically closer offices, we expect an increase in proximity to improve practice offices’...

We examine the link between Internal Revenue Service (IRS) monitoring and yield spreads on private firms' 144A bond issues. After controlling for security-specific and other firm-specific determinants, we provide evidence that debt financing is cheaper when the probability of a face-to-face IRS...

For a sample comprising 36,105 U.S. firm-year observations from 1985 to 2008, we find that firms located in more religious counties enjoy cheaper equity financing costs. This result is robust to a battery of sensitivity tests, including alternative assumptions and model specifications,...