We hypothesize that after a relaxation of short selling constraints, an escalation in short selling activity will heighten incentives for short sellers to accelerate price discovery by revealing their negative information. Consistent with this conjecture, we find that the overall sentiment of media coverage tilts significantly more negative for pilot relative to control firms following exogenous relief of short sale constraints.

Recent research has documented that industry concentration has increased significantly over the past 25 years, with potentially negative consequences for competition, productivity, and social welfare. Some have suggested that greater corporate tax planning by industry leaders, which can provide them with a cost advantage over their competitors, has contributed to this trend. As a result, policymakers are targeting such tax planning to reduce industry concentration.

George Floyd’s murder caused many firms to reveal how exposed they are to racial diversity issues. We examine investor and firm behaviors after this socially significant event to provide evidence on the valuation effects of the exposure and ensuing corporate responses. We develop a text-based measure of a firm’s exposure to racial diversity issues from conference call transcripts and find that, after the murder of George Floyd, firms with diversity exposure experience a stock price decrease of approximately 0.7% around the date of the conference call. Initiatives taken by firms mitigate the negative market reaction.

We quantify the immediate net effect of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) on the tax burden of corporate profits for public US corporations.

We examine firm disclosure choice during the initial public offering (IPO) roadshow presentation to understand the informativeness of a management presentation designed to attract investors. Although firms submit a comprehensive registration filing during the IPO, managers also prepare a roadshow presentation, which is shorter and typically allows managers more autonomy to select the information released and how it is discussed. We find that IPO roadshows have significantly more positive, less negative, and less uncertain language than the SEC filing.

This study documents that big bath accounting following CEO turnovers is pervasive worldwide and shows that the extent to which CEOs engage in big bath accounting is associated with the degree of discretion they have available in their respective countries. Our analysis is based on a new country-level measure for managerial discretion derived from a questionnaire survey with more than 500 strategy consultants from 35 countries.

This paper investigates how bank supervisors’ enforcement decisions and orders (EDOs) influence the allocation of mortgage lending across demographic groups underlying a banks’ borrower base. Specifically, we investigate how banks’ mortgage lending to minority borrowers relative to white borrowers changes following the resolution of severe EDOs.

We examine the validity of the underlying assumption that the tax system favors superstar firms, using both forward-looking and backward-looking measures of firms’ tax burdens. Across multiple specifications, we find little empirical support for the idea that superstar firms are tax advantaged.

This study examines whether the disclosure of critical audit matters (CAMs) in the expanded audit report in China is associated with an increase in audited financial statement quality. Specifically, we predict and find that timeliness of goodwill impairment by Chinese listed firms increased after the disclosure of CAMs related to goodwill.

We examine the relation between plant-level predictive analytics use and centralization of authority for more than 25,000 manufacturing plants using proprietary US Census data. We focus on headquarters authority over plants through delegation of decision-making and design of performance-based incentives.

This study finds that the requirement of ASC 842 for firms to capitalize operating leases in financial statements beginning in 2019 resulted in firms affected by the standard reducing existing debt amounts on average between 7% and 10% relative to unaffected firms. We also find that firms with greater operating lease capitalization as a result of implementation of ASC 842 are more likely to reduce their reliance on existing debt.

This study examines the information content of risk factor disclosures following private debt issuance. Loan issuance is an information-intensive activity that significantly increases private information production through borrower-lender interactions.