2020 marks the fiftieth anniversary of Milton Friedman's influential clarion call to American business – that their “social responsibility” is to increase profits. In the period since, even as corporations internalized this message to a degree perhaps Friedman himself did not conceive, our...

If the differences in accounting standards across countries reflect relatively stable institutional differences, why did several countries rapidly adopt IFRS in the 2003-2008 period? We test the hypothesis that perceived network benefits from the extant worldwide adoption of IFRS can explain...

SEC oversight of publicly listed firms ranges from comment letter (CL) reviews of firms' reporting compliance to pursuing enforcement actions against violators. Prior literature finds that firm political connections (PC) negatively predict enforcement actions, inferring SEC capture. We present...

I develop the notion of “thin political markets.” These are esoteric areas of market rule-making where corporate managers possess the technical expertise necessary for informed regulation, enjoy strong economic interests in the outcome, and face little political opposition. The motivating...

SFAS 142 requires managers to estimate the current fair value of goodwill to determine goodwill write-offs. In promulgating the standard, the FASB predicted managers will, on average, use the fair value estimates to convey private information on future cash flows. The current fair value of...

SFAS 142 requires firms to use fair-value estimates to determine goodwill impairments. Watts (2003) and Ramanna (2007) argue the unverifiable nature of those fair-value estimates gives firms discretion to manage impairments. We test this argument in a sample of firms with market indications of...