Journal of Accounting Research最新文献

Connected financial journalists—those with working relationships, common school ties, or social media connections to company management—introduce a marked media slant into their news coverage. Using a comprehensive set of newspaper articles covering mergers and acquisition (M&A) transactions from 1997 to 2016, I find that connected journalists use significantly fewer negative words in their coverage of connected acquirers. These journalists are also more likely to quote connected executives and include less accurate language in their reporting. Moreover, they tend to portray other firms in the same network in a less negative light. Journalists’ favoritism bias has implications for both capital market outcomes and their careers. I find that acquirers whose M&As are covered by connected journalists receive significantly higher stock returns on the news article publication date. However, these acquirers’ stock prices reverse in the long term, suggesting market overreaction to news covered by connected journalists. Around M&A transactions, connected articles are correlated with increased bid competition and deal premiums. In terms of future career development, connected journalists are more likely to leave journalism and join their associated industries in the long run. Taken together, the evidence suggests that financial journalists’ personal networks promote news bias that potentially hinders the efficient dissemination of information.

I study whether firms that receive targeted U.S. state-level subsidies are more likely to subsequently engage in corporate misconduct. I find that firms are more likely to engage in misconduct in subsidizing states, but not in other states that they operate in, after receiving state subsidies. Using data on both federal and state enforcement actions, and exploiting the legal principle of dual sovereignty for identification, I show that this finding reflects an increase in the underlying rate of misconduct and that this increase is attributable to lenient state-level misconduct enforcement. Collectively, my findings present evidence of an important consequence of targeted firm-specific subsidies: nonfinancial misconduct that potentially could impact the very stakeholders subsidies are ostensibly intended to benefit.

The Journal of Accounting Research is proud to recognize our top referees of the previous calendar year. The senior editors selected those named below for their “2023 Excellence in Refereeing” based on the quality and the number of reviews they had performed for the journal during the years 2022 and 2023. We thank the referees for their invaluable services to the journal.

Darren Bernard, University of Washington

Anne Beyer, Stanford University

Jannis Bischof, University of Mannheim

Elizabeth Blankespoor, University of Washington

Matthew Bloomfield, University of Pennsylvania

Khrystyna Bochkay, University of Miami

Mark Bradshaw, Boston College

Matthias Breuer, Columbia University

Ulf Brüggemann, Humboldt University Berlin

Jung Ho Choi, Stanford University

Lisa De Simone, University of Texas, Austin

Yiwei Dou, New York University

Raphael Duguay, Yale University

Atif Ellahie, University of Utah

Henry Eyring, Duke University

Vivian Fang, Indiana University

Elia Ferracuti, Duke University

Fabrizio Ferri, University of Miami

Henry Friedman, University of California, Los Angeles

John Gallemore, University of North Carolina

João Granja, University of Chicago

Nicholas Guest, Cornell University

Allen Huang, Hong Kong University of Science & Technology

Xu Jiang, Duke University

Zachary Kaplan, Washington University, St. Louis Sehwa Kim, Columbia University

Rebecca Lester, Stanford University

Miao Liu, Boston College

Yao Lu, Cornell University

William Mayew, Duke University

Charles McClure, University of Chicago

Maximilian Muhn, University of Chicago

Anya Nakhmurina, Yale University

Allison Nicoletti, University of Pennsylvania

Gaizka Ormazabal, IESE Business School

Thomas Rauter, University of Chicago

Delphine Samuels, University of Chicago

Timothy Shields, Chapman University

Nemit Shroff, MIT

Gurpal Sran, New York University

Christopher Stewart, University of Chicago

Lorien Stice-Lawrence, University of Southern California

Andrew Sutherland, MIT

Sorabh Tomar, Southern Methodist University

Rahul Vashishtha, Duke University

David Veenman, University of Amsterdam

Braden Williams, University of Texas, Austin

Gwen Yu, University of Michigan

Frank Zhou, University of Pennsylvania

Christina Zhu, University of Pennsylvania

We compile a novel data set on mandatory environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosure around the world to analyze the stock liquidity effects of such disclosure mandates. We document a positive effect of ESG disclosure mandates on firm-level stock liquidity. The effects are strongest if the disclosure requirements are implemented by government institutions, not on a comply-or-explain basis, and coupled with strong enforcement by informal institutions. Firms with weaker information environments benefit more from ESG disclosure mandates. Our results support the view that ESG disclosure regulation improves the information environment and has beneficial capital market effects.

Many firms use relative stock performance to evaluate and incentivize their CEOs. We document that such firms routinely disclose information that harms their peers' stock prices, and sometimes explicitly mention the harmed peers, by name, in these disclosures. Consistent with deliberate sabotage, peer-harming disclosures appear to be aimed at peers whose stock price depressions are most likely to benefit the disclosing firms' CEOs. The pricing effect of these disclosures does not reverse, suggesting that the disclosures contain legitimate information regarding peers' prospects. In sum, our results suggest that relative performance evaluation in CEO pay motivates CEOs to internalize the externalities of their disclosures, and strategically disclose information that harms peers' stock prices, in order to improve their firms' relative standing within their peer group.