We define accrual duration as the length of time between an accrual and its associated cash flow. Accrual duration is inextricably linked to accrual discretion and accrual quality by the fundamentals of the accrual process—the recording of …

Using the number of Robinhood users holding a firm’s shares, I examine how novice retail investors respond to earnings announcements and the implications of their responses for the price-earnings relation. I do not find evidence of informed …

Using the staggered establishment of environmental courts in China, we study the effect of environmental law enforcement on audit fees. We find that companies’ abnormal audit fees increase significantly after the establishment of a specialized …

The SEC limits sell-side analysts’ research activities on IPO firms both before and immediately after going public (the IPO quiet period). However, during the IPO quiet period, analysts provide regular coverage of IPO peer firms, which is …

Automation—such as machine learning, robotic process automation, and artificial intelligence—is the next major technological leap in accounting and financial reporting, and I empirically study whether public firms’ use of automation technology …

This paper studies the grouping of firms based on their labor-market connections, a significant departure from the traditional approach of grouping based on product-market connections. It also proposes a measure of labor market peers by analyzing …

This study examines the properties of innovation disclosures contained in new product announcements, a form of voluntary, nonfinancial disclosure. We analyze these properties using a novel, text-based measure of the extent of product innovation …

This study examines whether auditors serve as a conduit for disseminating Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) views on reporting and disclosure matters as the result of being privy to clients’ SEC comment letters. This examination is …

Many of America’s top corporate donors share a common feature: the bulk of their giving is in the form of in-kind products, not cash. This phenomenon is not a coincidence but rather closely tied to the tax code creating such a preference due to an …

We find that the exogenous shock of the collapse of Lehman Brothers leads to significant increases in the disclosure of management earnings forecasts and voluntary 8-K items by equity underwriting clients of Lehman relative to clients of other …

We examine customer responses to publicly traded firms speaking out in response to the state of Georgia’s voting reform laws. For firms that speak out, we find that customer visits and visitors at their stores decrease relative to the stores of …

This paper identifies a helpful red flag stakeholders can use to detect whether a nonprofit has managed its financial information. This red flag is reporting an identical program ratio—that is, the nonprofit organization reports the exact same …

We examine differences in CEOs’ achievement of earnings per share (EPS) targets related to (1) analysts’ forecasts and (2) internal cash bonus payouts. Our focus on firms with different benchmarks for the same performance metric enables us to …

Although foreign media outlets comprise a substantial proportion of the media covering U.S. financial markets, their characteristics and role in these financial markets have not been explored. Using a novel, manually collected dataset covering …

Motivated by investor criticisms of current accounting standards, this study investigates whether differences exist in how acquired identifiable intangible assets relate to investors’ expectations about the entity’s cash flow prospects. Some …

This paper examines how the media responds to the loss of analyst coverage resulting from brokerage mergers and closures. We find some evidence of an overall decrease in media coverage of affected firms, consistent with analysts serving as a …

Previous research finds that EPS growth rates are difficult to predict and reasons that much of the observed cross-sectional variation in valuation ratios is due to variation in implied future stock returns. Yet the observed cross-sectional …

Given important market and regulatory changes over the past two decades, we re-examine the relation between IPO pricing and coverage by sell-side stock analysts. Our design builds on the well-documented finding of the partial adjustment …

We study the effects of mood as a source of human bias on regulators’ oversight and enforcement decisions. We use weather at facilities at the time of an OSHA inspection to proxy for the OSHA compliance officers’ mood. We find that, during periods …

We examine the effects of local newspapers on firms’ information environments. With newspaper employment dropping precipitously in the last few decades, we posit that these changes will harm local firms’ information environments. Consistent with …