Theory and recent empirical literature suggest that social and professional connections may influence corporate policy. However, inference may be biased by the possibility that firms who share peers also share unobserved characteristics that are correlated with observed policy. Using a novel...

Companies are adopting executive compensation recoupment ("clawback") policies to discourage aggressive financial reporting choices. Recent research suggests clawback policies might encourage other, less aggressive, means of meeting earnings expectations. We suggest that reducing income tax...

We examine whether the readability of financial statement footnotes in the annual report is informative about audit engagement risk. Using various readability measures, we predict and find that firms with less readable footnotes have longer audit report lag, incur higher audit fees, and are more...

Relative performance evaluation (RPE) is a common practice in compensation contracting, essentially conditioning management compensation on the achievement of certain performance goals relative to a benchmark. In this paper, we examine the incentive effects of RPE usage on tax outcomes. We...

Theoretical and empirical studies argue that managerial hoarding of negative firm-specific information can result in large negative stock price corrections once the accumulated information is revealed. A managerial labor market with tournament-like progression provides managers with the...

Building on recent theory, we find strong and robust evidence that external labor market incentives motivate CEOs to adopt more aggressive tax policies in order to improve firm performance and their own labor market value. In addition, we find that the tax aggressiveness-labor market incentives...

This study examines the tax avoidance behavior of firms prior to the issuance, and following the resolution, of SEC tax comment letters. We find that firms that appear to engage in greater tax avoidance are more likely to receive a tax-related SEC comment letter. We also find that firms...

We explore the possibility that SEC oversight influences disclosure practices in a manner that reduces the likelihood of individual stock price crashes. Firms located farther from the SEC have greater stock price crash risk and this result is more pronounced for firms with financial statements...

Theory suggests that inside debt held by executives in the form of deferred compensation and unfunded pensions serves to align management incentives with creditors, thereby incentivizing them to act more conservatively. Evidence in the literature suggests that creditors favor less aggressive tax...

We use a regulatory shock to examine the extent to which the prospect of short selling affects tax disclosure. From May 2005 to August 2007, the SEC initiated a pilot program under Regulation SHO, which temporarily exempted one-third of the firms in the Russell 3000 index from short sale price...