This paper studies how partisan alignment between city leaders and state governors shapes information processing and bond pricing in the municipal bond market. Using a novel data set on 1,045 U.S. cities from 2005 to 2019, we show that cities with the same political affiliation as the state governor face 9 basis points lower borrowing costs than misaligned cities. The effect is stronger for riskier bonds, in states where governors hold greater authority, and for fiscally dependent cities. Aligned cities also receive more aid during fiscal distress. Partisan alignment shapes how investors interpret and respond to financial information: Nondisclosure and adverse audit findings raise borrowing costs primarily for misaligned cities, while penalties for aligned cities are markedly smaller.
{"title":"Partisan Cities: How State-Local Political Alignment Shapes Credit Risk and Information Processing in the Municipal Bond Market","authors":"RAMONA DAGOSTINO, ANYA NAKHMURINA","doi":"10.1111/1475-679x.70041","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-679x.70041","url":null,"abstract":"This paper studies how partisan alignment between city leaders and state governors shapes information processing and bond pricing in the municipal bond market. Using a novel data set on 1,045 U.S. cities from 2005 to 2019, we show that cities with the same political affiliation as the state governor face 9 basis points lower borrowing costs than misaligned cities. The effect is stronger for riskier bonds, in states where governors hold greater authority, and for fiscally dependent cities. Aligned cities also receive more aid during fiscal distress. Partisan alignment shapes how investors interpret and respond to financial information: Nondisclosure and adverse audit findings raise borrowing costs primarily for misaligned cities, while penalties for aligned cities are markedly smaller.","PeriodicalId":48414,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Accounting Research","volume":"37 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.4,"publicationDate":"2026-02-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146115751","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Effective policymakers must balance the demands of formulating a corporate tax system that raises revenue and spurs economic activity (e.g., investment) while promoting a “level playing field” across firms. Balancing these tradeoffs has likely caused tax systems to become more complex over time, increasing firms’ difficulty in understanding and complying with tax regulations. We investigate the impact of tax system complexity on the responsiveness of firm‐level investment to tax policy changes. Exploiting staggered tax rate changes and variation in tax system complexity across countries, we document two key findings. First, firm‐level investment is less sensitive to changes in the corporate tax rate when tax system complexity is higher, suggesting that such complexity can undermine the ability of tax policy to affect economic growth. Second, the impact of tax complexity on the sensitivity of investment to tax rate changes varies significantly across firms, with domestic‐owned, smaller, and private firms being more affected. These cross‐sectional disparities are consistent with tax system complexity potentially reducing tax system parity. Collectively, our findings suggest that corporate tax system complexity can negatively impact the ability of fiscal policy to affect investment and lead to heterogeneous tax policy responses across firms.
{"title":"Corporate Tax System Complexity and Investment Sensitivity to Tax Policy Changes","authors":"HARALD AMBERGER, JOHN GALLEMORE, JARON WILDE","doi":"10.1111/1475-679x.70040","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-679x.70040","url":null,"abstract":"Effective policymakers must balance the demands of formulating a corporate tax system that raises revenue and spurs economic activity (e.g., investment) while promoting a “level playing field” across firms. Balancing these tradeoffs has likely caused tax systems to become more complex over time, increasing firms’ difficulty in understanding and complying with tax regulations. We investigate the impact of tax system complexity on the responsiveness of firm‐level investment to tax policy changes. Exploiting staggered tax rate changes and variation in tax system complexity across countries, we document two key findings. First, firm‐level investment is less sensitive to changes in the corporate tax rate when tax system complexity is higher, suggesting that such complexity can undermine the ability of tax policy to affect economic growth. Second, the impact of tax complexity on the sensitivity of investment to tax rate changes varies significantly across firms, with domestic‐owned, smaller, and private firms being more affected. These cross‐sectional disparities are consistent with tax system complexity potentially reducing tax system parity. Collectively, our findings suggest that corporate tax system complexity can negatively impact the ability of fiscal policy to affect investment and lead to heterogeneous tax policy responses across firms.","PeriodicalId":48414,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Accounting Research","volume":"102 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.4,"publicationDate":"2026-01-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146056054","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Issue Information ‐ Standing Call for Proposals for","authors":"","doi":"10.1111/1475-679x.70038","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-679x.70038","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48414,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Accounting Research","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.4,"publicationDate":"2026-01-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146056053","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Issue Information - Request for Papers","authors":"","doi":"10.1111/1475-679x.70037","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1475-679x.70037","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48414,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Accounting Research","volume":"64 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.3,"publicationDate":"2026-01-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1475-679x.70037","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146056052","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
We examine whether and, if so, how retail consumers change their shopping in response to firm-specific negative environmental, social, and governance (ESG) news. Using an event study methodology, we do not find significant changes in consumer foot traffic in response to negative ESG news, on average. However, the average consumer reacts negatively when such news is covered by national or global media outlets, which elevates consumer awareness. In addition, we provide evidence of the heterogeneity in responses to negative ESG news across consumer groups. Consumers in more ESG-conscious counties, as measured by county ESG preferences, income, education, and political ideology, reduce store visits in response to negative ESG news. In contrast, consumers in the least ESG-conscious counties increase their visits in response to negative ESG news. These opposing reactions explain the insignificant average consumer response to negative ESG news. Furthermore, the ESG-conscious consumers' negative reaction is, at most, modest, dissipating within six weeks. Overall, our findings suggest that firms face divergent responses to ESG activities from different consumer groups, underscoring the divisive nature of ESG issues.
{"title":"Do Consumers Vote with Their Feet in Response to Negative ESG News? Evidence from Foot Traffic to Retail Locations","authors":"SVENJA DUBE, HYE SEUNG (GRACE) LEE, DANYE WANG","doi":"10.1111/1475-679x.70034","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-679x.70034","url":null,"abstract":"We examine whether and, if so, how retail consumers change their shopping in response to firm-specific negative environmental, social, and governance (ESG) news. Using an event study methodology, we do not find significant changes in consumer foot traffic in response to negative ESG news, on average. However, the average consumer reacts negatively when such news is covered by national or global media outlets, which elevates consumer awareness. In addition, we provide evidence of the heterogeneity in responses to negative ESG news across consumer groups. Consumers in more ESG-conscious counties, as measured by county ESG preferences, income, education, and political ideology, reduce store visits in response to negative ESG news. In contrast, consumers in the least ESG-conscious counties increase their visits in response to negative ESG news. These opposing reactions explain the insignificant average consumer response to negative ESG news. Furthermore, the ESG-conscious consumers' negative reaction is, at most, modest, dissipating within six weeks. Overall, our findings suggest that firms face divergent responses to ESG activities from different consumer groups, underscoring the divisive nature of ESG issues.","PeriodicalId":48414,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Accounting Research","volume":"31 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.4,"publicationDate":"2026-01-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146005694","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
We examine the labor market consequences of the 2020 Regulation S‐K requiring human capital disclosure in 10K filings. Using large‐sample job‐level data and a Generative Large Language Model (GLLM), we observe that public firms subject to the regulation increase their disclosure of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) information in job postings relative to a matched sample of large private firms. The increase in job‐posting disclosure is more pronounced among firms facing greater external pressure to increase their workforce diversity. These findings suggest a shift in demand for diverse candidates by public firms following the regulation. Yet, consistent with short‐term inelastic labor supply, this demand shift lengthens the recruitment period, with noticeable increases in workplace gender diversity emerging one year after the regulation, particularly among firms that demonstrate a credible commitment to DEI. Our study documents how securities regulations can impact labor market practices and underscores the challenges involved in shaping workforce diversity.
{"title":"Human Capital Disclosure and Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence from Regulation S‐K","authors":"Jung Ho Choi, Dan Li, Daniele Macciocchi","doi":"10.1111/1475-679x.70036","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-679x.70036","url":null,"abstract":"We examine the labor market consequences of the 2020 Regulation S‐K requiring human capital disclosure in 10K filings. Using large‐sample job‐level data and a Generative Large Language Model (GLLM), we observe that public firms subject to the regulation increase their disclosure of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) information in job postings relative to a matched sample of large private firms. The increase in job‐posting disclosure is more pronounced among firms facing greater external pressure to increase their workforce diversity. These findings suggest a shift in demand for diverse candidates by public firms following the regulation. Yet, consistent with short‐term inelastic labor supply, this demand shift lengthens the recruitment period, with noticeable increases in workplace gender diversity emerging one year after the regulation, particularly among firms that demonstrate a credible commitment to DEI. Our study documents how securities regulations can impact labor market practices and underscores the challenges involved in shaping workforce diversity.","PeriodicalId":48414,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Accounting Research","volume":"38 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.4,"publicationDate":"2026-01-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145955081","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Christopher Armstrong, Stephen Glaeser, Stella Yeayeun Park, Oscar Timmermans
We study how the assignment of intellectual property rights between inventors and their employers affects innovation. Incomplete contracting theories predict that stronger employer property rights reduce the threat that employee inventors hold up their employers, thereby affecting inventor and invention outcomes. We test these predictions using a U.S. appellate court ruling that shifted the assignment of property rights from inventors to their employers. Within-employer-year analyses demonstrate that affected inventors are less likely to retain patent rights, assign patents to new employers, or leave their current employer, all consistent with reduced inventor ability to hold up their employers. Due to the reduced possibility of hold-up, affected inventors’ innovations are revealed more promptly when disclosed, draw from a broader set of prior patents, and spread more to subsequent patents. If affected inventors do leave their employer, they are more likely to relocate to unaffected states. Furthermore, employers affected by the ruling are more likely to locate their inventors in agglomeration economies and alter their innovation strategy by reallocating activity across states and expanding their innovation portfolios. Our collective evidence suggests that shifting intellectual property rights to employers affects inventor and invention outcomes by reducing the threat of employee hold-up from the employer's perspective.
{"title":"The Assignment of Intellectual Property Rights and Innovation","authors":"Christopher Armstrong, Stephen Glaeser, Stella Yeayeun Park, Oscar Timmermans","doi":"10.1111/1475-679x.70035","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-679x.70035","url":null,"abstract":"We study how the assignment of intellectual property rights between inventors and their employers affects innovation. Incomplete contracting theories predict that stronger employer property rights reduce the threat that employee inventors hold up their employers, thereby affecting inventor and invention outcomes. We test these predictions using a U.S. appellate court ruling that shifted the assignment of property rights from inventors to their employers. Within-employer-year analyses demonstrate that affected inventors are less likely to retain patent rights, assign patents to new employers, or leave their current employer, all consistent with reduced inventor ability to hold up their employers. Due to the reduced possibility of hold-up, affected inventors’ innovations are revealed more promptly when disclosed, draw from a broader set of prior patents, and spread more to subsequent patents. If affected inventors do leave their employer, they are more likely to relocate to unaffected states. Furthermore, employers affected by the ruling are more likely to locate their inventors in agglomeration economies and alter their innovation strategy by reallocating activity across states and expanding their innovation portfolios. Our collective evidence suggests that shifting intellectual property rights to employers affects inventor and invention outcomes by reducing the threat of employee hold-up from the employer's perspective.","PeriodicalId":48414,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Accounting Research","volume":"27 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.4,"publicationDate":"2026-01-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145919875","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This study examines the relation between CEOs’ preferences for environmental protection (“nature‐loving preferences”) and corporate environmental actions. Drawing on social ecology research, I develop a proxy for CEOs’ nature‐loving preferences based on their childhood exposure to greenspace and validate it using their positive discussions of nature during earnings conference calls. Findings show a significant positive association between CEOs’ nature‐loving preferences and their firms’ participation in Clean Development Mechanism projects. This effect remains robust after addressing firm–CEO matching and omitted variable concerns. Cross‐sectional tests reveal stronger effects when local environmental demands are high and when CEOs have greater decision‐making power. Further analyses suggest that these CEOs are associated with greater corporate carbon reduction, while market reactions to their appointments remain neutral. The study highlights the link between CEOs’ personal environmental preferences and firms’ environmental actions, offering new insights into individual‐level factors behind corporate social responsibility.
{"title":"Do Nature‐Loving CEOs Make the World Greener?","authors":"WEIJIA ZHI","doi":"10.1111/1475-679x.70033","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-679x.70033","url":null,"abstract":"This study examines the relation between CEOs’ preferences for environmental protection (“nature‐loving preferences”) and corporate environmental actions. Drawing on social ecology research, I develop a proxy for CEOs’ nature‐loving preferences based on their childhood exposure to greenspace and validate it using their positive discussions of nature during earnings conference calls. Findings show a significant positive association between CEOs’ nature‐loving preferences and their firms’ participation in Clean Development Mechanism projects. This effect remains robust after addressing firm–CEO matching and omitted variable concerns. Cross‐sectional tests reveal stronger effects when local environmental demands are high and when CEOs have greater decision‐making power. Further analyses suggest that these CEOs are associated with greater corporate carbon reduction, while market reactions to their appointments remain neutral. The study highlights the link between CEOs’ personal environmental preferences and firms’ environmental actions, offering new insights into individual‐level factors behind corporate social responsibility.","PeriodicalId":48414,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Accounting Research","volume":"59 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.4,"publicationDate":"2025-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145730999","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper examines how market participants trade on private information about firm fundamentals using the largest known case of informed trade of earnings announcements. From 2011 to 2015, a cartel of sophisticated traders illegally obtained early access to and traded on over 1,000 firm earnings announcements. Using this setting, I identify the information in earnings announcements that these market participants found most price relevant. The informed traders preferred announcements with larger earnings and sales surprises relative to forecasts, quantitative managerial guidance, and more extreme news sentiment. Despite their perfect foresight, the traders performed, perhaps surprisingly, poorly relative to hypothetical trading strategies based on comparable foresight. Frictions that limited their performance include price impact, risk aversion, and information processing costs. The trading performance of these informed traders implies that information about firm fundamentals explains little of the cross‐sectional variation in earnings announcement returns, even for sophisticated market participants.
{"title":"Informed Trade of Earnings Announcements","authors":"CHLOE XIE","doi":"10.1111/1475-679x.70032","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-679x.70032","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines how market participants trade on private information about firm fundamentals using the largest known case of informed trade of earnings announcements. From 2011 to 2015, a cartel of sophisticated traders illegally obtained early access to and traded on over 1,000 firm earnings announcements. Using this setting, I identify the information in earnings announcements that these market participants found most price relevant. The informed traders preferred announcements with larger earnings and sales surprises relative to forecasts, quantitative managerial guidance, and more extreme news sentiment. Despite their perfect foresight, the traders performed, perhaps surprisingly, poorly relative to hypothetical trading strategies based on comparable foresight. Frictions that limited their performance include price impact, risk aversion, and information processing costs. The trading performance of these informed traders implies that information about firm fundamentals explains little of the cross‐sectional variation in earnings announcement returns, even for sophisticated market participants.","PeriodicalId":48414,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Accounting Research","volume":"3 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.4,"publicationDate":"2025-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145730962","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Karthik Balakrishnan, Darren Bernard, Kristina M. Rennekamp, Blake Steenhoven
Capital flows increase in response to new public information. Conventional explanations typically conclude that this reflects a rational response to reduced risk. However, investors may also be overconfident in their ability to benefit from new information, even when it is publicly available and does not provide a relative advantage. We exploit two complementary settings to examine how this “better‐than‐average” mechanism affects capital flows. Archival evidence from horse race betting markets shows capital flows increase following the public provision of a summary measure of horse performance, even though more total parimutuel wagering necessarily implies a greater wealth transfer from bettors to tracks. A controlled lab experiment provides direct causal evidence of our proposed mechanism. Combined, our results suggest that new public information can increase capital flows due to investors’ overconfidence in their ability to benefit from information relative to others. Our findings inform regulators seeking to understand the consequences of expanding the public information available to individual investors.
{"title":"Public Information, Relative Overconfidence, and Capital Flows","authors":"Karthik Balakrishnan, Darren Bernard, Kristina M. Rennekamp, Blake Steenhoven","doi":"10.1111/1475-679x.70031","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-679x.70031","url":null,"abstract":"Capital flows increase in response to new public information. Conventional explanations typically conclude that this reflects a rational response to reduced risk. However, investors may also be overconfident in their ability to benefit from new information, even when it is publicly available and does not provide a relative advantage. We exploit two complementary settings to examine how this “better‐than‐average” mechanism affects capital flows. Archival evidence from horse race betting markets shows capital flows increase following the public provision of a summary measure of horse performance, even though more total parimutuel wagering necessarily implies a greater wealth transfer from bettors to tracks. A controlled lab experiment provides direct causal evidence of our proposed mechanism. Combined, our results suggest that new public information can increase capital flows due to investors’ overconfidence in their ability to benefit from information relative to others. Our findings inform regulators seeking to understand the consequences of expanding the public information available to individual investors.","PeriodicalId":48414,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Accounting Research","volume":"29 1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.4,"publicationDate":"2025-12-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145704195","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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