Using a propensity-score matched sample and a difference-in-differences research design, we find that stock price crash risk increases after a firm voluntarily incorporates clawback provisions in executive officers' compensation contracts. This heightened crash risk is concentrated in adopters...

In this paper, we examine whether the industry-specialist audit fee premium and scale discounts are attributable to financial statement complexity. Financial statement complexity is measured using a combination of the number of Arabic numerals, the number of words, and the readability of 10-K...

Prior studies provide conflicting evidence as to whether managers have a general tendency to disclose or withhold bad news. A key challenge for this literature is that researchers cannot observe the negative private information that managers possess. We tackle this challenge by constructing a...

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) allows firms to redact information from material contracts by submitting confidential treatment requests, if redacted information is not material and would cause competitive harm upon public disclosure. This study examines whether managers use...

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) uses information in firms’ public disclosures as well as private tax returns to detect tax noncompliance. Consistent with managers perceiving that material contracts contain information that could be useful to the resource-constrained IRS for its enforcement...

The 2006 SEC rule, by changing the definition of Named Executive Officers, mandates CFO compensation disclosure. Using this setting and a difference-in-differences research design, we study the real effects of CFO compensation disclosure regulation on CFO job performance. We hypothesize that the...