The Economic Implications of Corporate Financial Reporting

We survey 401 financial executives, and conduct in-depth interviews with an additional 20, to determine the key factors that drive decisions related to reported earnings and voluntary disclosure. The majority of firms view earnings, especially EPS, as the key metric for outsiders, even more so than cash flows. Because of the severe market reaction to missing an earnings target, we find that firms are willing to sacrifice economic value in order to meet a short-run earnings target. The preference for smooth earnings is so strong that 78% of the surveyed executives would give up economic value in exchange for smooth earnings. We find that 55% of managers would avoid initiating a very positive NPV project if it meant falling short of the current quarter's consensus earnings. Missing an earnings target or reporting volatile earnings is thought to reduce the predictability of earnings, which in turn reduces stock price because investors and analysts hate uncertainty. We also find that managers make voluntary disclosures to reduce information risk associated with their stock but try to avoid setting a disclosure precedent that will be difficult to maintain. In general, management's views provide support for stock price motivations for earnings management and voluntary disclosure, but provide only modest evidence in support of other theories of these phenomena (such as debt, political cost and bonus plan based hypotheses).

Measuring Audit Quality

This study first provides detailed descriptive analyses on 45 specific audit deficiency allegations based on GAAS as detailed in 141 AAERs and 153 securities class action lawsuits over the violation years 1978-2016, and then uses these allegations to validate existing popular proxies of audit quality. Of all the audit quality proxies, we find that restatements consistently predict all the top six most cited audit violations. The ratio of audit fees to total fees and the presence of city specialist auditor predict five of the most cited violations. Overall, our results suggest that the predictive power of audit quality proxies depends on (i) the settings that researchers are interested in; and (ii) the specific audit violations hypothesized to matter in the investigated setting. For example, for future studies related to auditor independence, we recommend the use of restatements and audit fees to total fees ratio as proxies of audit quality

Sharing the Pain between Workers and Management: Evidence from the COVID-19 Pandemic and 9/11 Attacks

We examine the rhetoric in ESG literature that managers “share the pain” of employees who are laid off or whose benefits are cut by committing to reduce CEO pay or by enacting other positive worker friendly actions during the Covid crisis. Using the exogenous shock of the COVID pandemic and a unique database, we examine more than 4,062 positive and negative actions targeted at workers taken by the S&P 1500 firms in 2020 in response to the pandemic. Our findings indicate that economic considerations such as exposure to the pandemic and poor stock performance prior to the pandemic are the primary determinants of management’s decision to share the pain of employees. Stakeholder concerns, proxied by higher employee-related corporate social responsibility scores, lower pay disparity between the CEO and the median employee, or a signatory to the Business Roundtable Statement, are not associated with managers’ sharing of the pain. Evidence of such pain sharing from another unexpected crisis from the past –the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks – is remarkably similar. Sharing the pain is not associated with future stock returns performance. Finally, we show that the median CEO’s wealth increased nearly 18-fold relative to the CEO pay cut for firms that enforced CEO pay cuts and laid off employees during the Covid crisis. The paper adds to growing evidence that U.S. firms do not appear to “walk the talk” of concerns for stakeholders

Non-audit services and financial reporting quality: evidence from 1978 to 1980

We provide evidence for the long-standing concern on auditor conflicts of interest from providing non-audit services (NAS) to audit clients by using rarely explored NAS fee data from 1978 to 1980. Using this earlier setting, we find cross-sectional evidence of improved earnings quality when auditors provide NAS, especially those related to information services. This is consistent with better audit quality from knowledge spillovers due to the joint offering of audit and consulting services. Events related to the repeal of these NAS disclosures in 1982 are associated with a small positive stock price reaction suggesting no adverse economic consequences of withdrawing NAS disclosures. Further, following the repeal of disclosure requirements we find no change in the earnings quality of client firms. In sum, data drawn from an earlier time period suggest that auditors' reputational incentives, possible synergies, and knowledge transfers imply that NAS offered by audit firms can be associated with improved audit and reporting quality in client firms

Do socially responsible firms walk the talk?

Several firms claim to be socially responsible. We confront these claims with data using the most notable recent proclamation, the Business Roundtable’s (BRT) 2019 Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation. The BRT is a large, influential business group containing many of America’s largest firms; the Statement proclaimed a corporation’s purpose as delivering value to all stakeholders, rather than only shareholders. However, we find no evidence that signatories – who voluntarily signed – engaged in such stakeholdercentric practices before or after signing. Relative to peers, signatories violate environmental and labor laws more frequently, have higher carbon emissions, rely more on government subsidies, and are more likely to disagree with proxy recommendations on shareholder proposals. We also do not observe post-signing improvements along these dimensions, suggesting that the Statement was not a credible commitment to improve. Our results suggest that firms’ proclamations of stakeholder-centric behavior are not backed up by hard data

Do ESG funds make stakeholder-friendly investments?

Investment funds that claim to focus on socially responsible stocks have proliferated in recent times. In this paper, we verify whether ESG mutual funds actually invest in firms that have stakeholder-friendly track records. Using a comprehensive sample of self-labelled ESG mutual funds (as identified by Morningstar) in the United States from 2010 to 2018, we find that these funds hold portfolio firms with worse track records for compliance with labor and environmental laws, relative to portfolio firms held by non-ESG funds managed by the same financial institutions in the same years. Relative to other funds offered by the same asset managers in the same years, ESG funds hold stocks that are more likely to voluntarily disclose carbon emissions performance but also stocks with higher carbon emissions per unit of revenue. Despite these findings, ESG funds hold portfolio firms with higher average ESG scores. We show that ESG scores are correlated with the quantity of voluntary ESG-related disclosures but not with firms’ compliance records or actual levels of carbon emissions. Finally, ESG funds appear to underperform financially relative to other funds within the same asset manager and year, and to charge higher fees. Our findings suggest that socially responsible funds do not appear to follow through on proclamations of concerns for stakeholders

Do the SEC's enforcement preferences affect corporate misconduct?

Recent frauds have questioned the efficacy of the SEC's enforcement program. We hypothesize that differences in firms' information sets about SEC enforcement and constraints facing the SEC affect firms' proclivity to adopt aggressive accounting practices. We find that firms located closer to the SEC and in areas with greater past SEC enforcement activity, both proxies for firms' information about SEC enforcement, are less likely to restate their financial statements. Consistent with the resource-constrained SEC view, the SEC is more likely to investigate firms located closer to its offices. Our results suggest that regulation is most effective when it is local.SEC Restatement Enforcement Distance Information asymmetry