Journal of Accounting Research最新文献

Substantial evidence suggests that regulatory agencies in the United States can be captured by the politicians who oversee them. We provide novel evidence of a federal agency in which capture is limited: the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Although patent applications from politically connected applicants are slightly more likely to be approved despite being of lower ex post quality, additional analyses suggest these outcomes are not indicative of capture. In particular, the disclosure quality of connected patents' legal claims increases more than unconnected patents during the review process, narrowing the scope of the patents and constraining the intellectual property rights. Furthermore, connected patents are no more likely than others to be litigated ex post, suggesting these patent grants are not spurious. Our findings provide insights into how the design of a regulator can limit the benefits that accrue to politically connected firms.

This registered report investigates self-directed retail investors' information choices and trading decisions on an integrated trading platform that provides timely and convenient access to accounting information. The analyses reveal that these investors access a mosaic of information, with a high proportion not firm-specific. In accessing accounting disclosures, retail investors are more interested in media articles providing summaries or expert analyses than original filings. Retail trades on this integrated trading platform are more informed than another retail trading platform providing little information services while exhibiting no significant differences in informativeness compared with institutional trades using Bulge Bracket platforms. In particular, trade informativeness is more pronounced when there are accounting disclosures. The evidence suggests that self-directed retail investors can benefit from a trading environment that provides rich and convenient access to a mosaic of information, particularly timely accounting disclosures.

We present a dynamic model of information acquisition and disclosure. The manager seeks to maximize future stock prices and collects information privately about the firm's fundamentals. Information acquisition increases the arrival rate of private information. The manager can choose to disclose his private information or withhold it in perpetuity. We study the impact of information acquisition on the accumulation of private information, disclosure, and the firm's initial investment.

We investigate the impact of observing peers’ information acquisition on financial analysts’ allocation of attention. Using the timely disclosure mandate by the Shenzhen Stock Exchange as a setting, we find that, shortly after analysts observe that a firm has been visited by peer analysts, they reduce short-term attention to that firm, as indicated by a reduced tendency to conduct follow-up visits. Nonvisiting analysts who do not conduct follow-up visits are more likely to discontinue coverage of the visited firm. These findings are consistent with the conjecture that the timely disclosure reveals the first-mover advantage of visiting analysts, leading nonvisiting ones to reallocate their limited attention. We also find that, compared with the pre-mandate period, the information environments of visited firms deteriorate immediately after an analyst's visit but not over the longer term. Further evidence suggests that the timely disclosure mandate has positive externalities in the form of increased immediate attention to and improved short-term information environments of unvisited peer firms.

I study how the disclosure of the liquidity coverage ratio mandated for a group of systemically important U.S. banks affects peer banks' liquidity holdings. I predict that the disclosure mitigates uncertainty about aggregate liquidity risk by providing insight into the likelihood of market-wide liquidity shocks and specific sources of liquidity stress. This uncertainty resolution, in turn, reduces nondisclosing banks' precautionary demand for liquidity. Using bank business interactions to measure the treatment intensity of the disclosure, I find that more treated nondisclosing banks cut their liquidity significantly more in response to the disclosure. In addition, the disclosure rule was followed by lower overall liquidity and a build-up of systemic risk, indicating an economically considerable disclosure spillover effect in the aggregate. My paper reveals a new economic force, the spillover effect of mandated liquidity disclosure, that shapes banks' liquidity holdings.

Upward influencers, employees who are more favorably perceived by their supervisors than their peers and subordinates, are predicted by economic and accounting theories and are found to be ubiquitous in many organizations. Despite their prevalence, the role of upward influencers in teams remains underexplored. This paper fills this void by using proprietary data from a service-providing organization that allows for the identification of upward influencers based on its 360-degree person evaluation. We find an inverted U-shaped relationship between the fraction of upward influencers in a team and team performance. In cross-sectional analyses, we show that this relationship is driven by conditions when the need for collaboration and information sharing is high and when managers are less experienced. Additional tests exploring the mechanisms for the role of upward influencers in teams suggest that they impair team horizontal relationships through lowering the willingness to communicate, share knowledge, and offer mutual assistance among team members. Yet, teams with upward influencers build better vertical relationships with supervisors, which, in return, is associated with supervisors allocating more of their time to provide team members with feedback and guidance. Taken together, this study contributes to the understanding of upward influencers in teams.