Estimating Firms’ Responses to Securities Regulation Using a Bunching Approach

IF 1 3区 社会学 Q3 ECONOMICS American Law and Economics Review Pub Date : 2023-06-08 DOI:10.1093/aler/ahac013
Dhammika Dharmapala
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Abstract

Many important provisions of US securities law—most notably, crucial elements of the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) legislation enacted in 2002—apply only to firms that have a public float of at least $75 million. Public float (i.e., the market value of shares held by non-insiders) is not comprehensively reported in standard databases, so I “scrape” public float data from firms’ 10-K filings for an extensive sample of reporting entities over fiscal years 1993–2015. I use a bunching approach that compares the number of observations immediately below the $75 million threshold to a smooth counterfactual density. Prior to SOX (i.e., over 1993–2002), there is no detectable bunching. Following SOX (i.e., over 2003–15), there is statistically significant evidence of bunching. However, the magnitude of bunching is relatively modest. Moreover, bunching is concentrated in the early post-SOX years (2003–09) and is virtually absent in later years (2010–15). The magnitude of bunching is not a sufficient statistic for the compliance costs of securities regulation because the costs of managing public float are unobservable. Nonetheless, the results of the bunching analysis cast some doubt on widespread claims that the regulatory burdens of these securities law provisions are large.
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用聚类方法估计公司对证券监管的反应
美国证券法的许多重要条款——尤其是2002年颁布的《萨班斯-奥克斯利法案》(Sarbanes-Oxley,简称SOX)的关键条款——仅适用于公众持股至少为7500万美元的公司。公众持股量(即非内部人士持有的股票的市场价值)在标准数据库中没有全面报告,因此我从公司的10-K文件中“抓取”公众持股量数据,以获取1993-2015财年报告实体的广泛样本。我使用了一种聚类方法,将直接低于7500万美元阈值的观察结果数量与平滑的反事实密度进行比较。在SOX之前(即1993-2002年),没有可检测到的群集。在SOX之后(即2003-15年),有统计上显著的聚类证据。然而,聚束的幅度相对较小。此外,聚类现象主要集中在后sox时期的早期(2003-09年),而在之后的年份(2010-15年)几乎不存在。由于管理公众持股的成本是不可观察的,因此聚类的规模不足以作为证券监管合规成本的充分统计。尽管如此,聚类分析的结果对普遍认为这些证券法条款的监管负担很大的说法提出了一些质疑。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
1.60
自引率
0.00%
发文量
9
期刊介绍: The rise of the field of law and economics has been extremely rapid over the last 25 years. Among important developments of the 1990s has been the founding of the American Law and Economics Association. The creation and rapid expansion of the ALEA and the creation of parallel associations in Europe, Latin America, and Canada attest to the growing acceptance of the economic perspective on law by judges, practitioners, and policy-makers.
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