This paper examines the determinants and disclosure consequences of SEC’s climate-related comment letters (CCLs) for recipient firms and their industry peers. We find that the likelihood of receiving a CCL decreases with more climate-related disclosures in 10-Ks but increases with more such

We investigate the motivations, effectiveness, and shareholder-value implications of public firms’ attempts to influence the SEC’s governance-related rulemaking. Our analysis leverages large language model-assisted text analysis and citation tracking to examine comment letters submitted during the

We examine why audit firms succeed in consulting markets and what this implies for audit quality. We argue that the audit practice serves as a reputation platform for consulting: audit reputation is verifiable through regulatory oversight and litigation exposure, while consulting reputation is not,

We examine how Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) mutual fund investors react to the distribution of the fund’s ESG performance depending on their motives to invest in ESG funds. Holding constant the overall average ESG performance, we draw on psychology theory on more attention paid to neg

Firms increasingly rely on employees’ social media information for screening and monitoring, suggesting that these practices may play an important role in managing human-capital-related firm risks. Exploiting the staggered enactment of state-level social media privacy laws (SMPLs) in a difference-in

In this seminar, Professor Stewart Jones will speak on two topics.First, he will share his reflections on the IASB Research Forum and recent developments in accounting research and standard setting.Second, he will discuss machine learning in accounting, drawing on his extensive research in this

Using hand-collected data from proxy statements for a comprehensive sample of U.S. firms, we examine how requiring firms to disclose whether they allow executives to hedge the downside risk of their company shareholdings affects CEO compensation policy. Employing a difference-in-differences design

The Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) code that a firm uses in its SEC EDGAR filings often differs from the code assigned by Compustat. Using 96,240 firm-year observations of U.S. public firms from 1996 through 2024, we find that the two sources disagree for 34.3% of firm-years, with disagree

We find that linguistic vagueness in analyst reports primarily reflects analysts’ limited firm-specific understanding arising from information uncertainty. Vagueness is higher for firms with greater information uncertainty and for analysts who are less experienced, face heavier workload constraints

We provide early evidence on the SEC’s most recent compensation reform—the Pay Versus Performance (PvP) disclosure rules. Using a sample of 652 U.S. public firms, our analysis shows that 97% of firms select accounting-based metrics as their firm-specific PvP measure - defined as the firm’s

This study demonstrates the economic value of expanding government data collection through central bank digital currency (CBDC) adoption, as reflected in corporate patenting responses. Exploiting the staggered rollout of the electronic Chinese yuan (e-CNY), we find that firms in pilot cities substan

We examine the role of income tax incentives in U.S. firms’ international physical trade flows. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 fundamentally changed the U.S.’s international tax policy, with an important objective of improving U.S. competitiveness and exports. We evaluate whether this tax reform