Search

There is limited evidence about when, why, and which individuals incur costs to acquire nonpublic information about a firm, largely due to the difficulty of observing private information acquisition. To overcome this difficulty, we obtain data on Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). We predict and find that perceived information asymmetry between managers and outsiders resulting from both proprietary and agency costs triggers FOIA search. We categorize organizations making FOIA requests using their business descriptions and find that many, including law and intellectual property firms, are not expressly interested in obtaining information for near-term equity trading. Instead, their search activity relates to determinants beyond financial characteristics, including patent litigation and executive turnover. Taken together, we provide evidence on private information search by a relatively unexamined set of organizations and shed new light on the function of the SEC’s Office of FOIA Services. JEL Classifications: D82; D83; M41.

We examine how executives' ability to control their firms' exposure to risk affects the design of their incentive-compensation contracts. Our natural experimental evidence shows that exchange-traded weather derivatives allow executives to control their firms' exposure to weather risk. Once these derivatives became available, those executives who use them to hedge experience relative reductions in their total compensation and equity incentives. The decline in compensation is consistent with a reduction in the risk premium that executives receive for exposure to weather risk. The decline in equity incentives is consistent with the relation between risk and incentives shifting in a complementary direction when executives can better control their firms' exposure to risk. Collectively, our findings provide evidence that executives' ability to control their firms' exposure and, by extension, their own to an important source of risk influences the design of their incentive-compensation contracts. JEL Classifications: G32; J33; J41.

We examine the relation between manager horizon and discretionary disclosure, using patenting as a measure of disclosure. Patenting reflects, in part, a manager’s decision to disclose the successful outcome of research and development (R&D). When a firm invests in R&D but does not patent, investors are unsure whether this reflects a failed R&D project or the manager choosing not to patent. We suggest that investors’ beliefs about a manager’s horizon—whether the manager seeks to maximize short-term stock price or long-term profits—moderates their reactions. When investors believe a manager’s horizon is short, they expect the manager to disclose successful outcomes and therefore discount nondisclosure more. We predict that managers will patent more per dollar of R&D spending when their horizons are short and that investors will discount the value of nondisclosing firms more when they believe the manager’s horizon is short. We find evidence consistent with these predictions.

We examine the relation between managers' personal income tax rates and their corporate investment decisions. Using plausibly exogenous variation in federal and state tax rates, we find a positive relation between managers' personal tax rates and their corporate risk-taking. Moreover—and consistent with our theoretical predictions—we find that this relation is stronger among firms with investment opportunities that have a relatively high rate of return per unit of risk, and stronger among CEOs who have a relatively low marginal disutility of risk. Importantly, our results are unique to senior managers' tax rates––we do not find similar relations for middle-income tax rates. Collectively, our findings provide evidence that managers' personal income taxes influence their corporate risk-taking decisions. JEL Classifications: G30; G32; G38; H24; H32. Data Availability: Data are available from the sources cited in the text. Data on manager tax rates used in this paper are available at: http://acct.wharton.upenn.edu/∼dtayl/.

Christensen et al. (2017) provide evidence that the dissemination of mine safety information in SEC filings has real effects on mine safety. We discuss the extent to which Christensen et al.’s results generalize to a research question that we consider of broader interest to accounting researchers, specifically where and when mandated disclosure in SEC filings can increase the dissemination of information. We also discuss identification of causal effects and generalizability concerns more broadly in the context of large sample studies and quasi-natural experiments, as well as potential ways authors might address these concerns in accounting research.

We study how the assignment of property rights between employees and their employers influences disclosures that reveal the productivity and ability of individual employees. To do so, we examine the effect of a court ruling that significantly shifted the assignment of intellectual property rights from inventors to their employers, but that was otherwise likely exogenous with respect to disclosure. Using a within-firm-year difference-in-differences design estimated across a sample of multiple firms, we find that firms accelerate their patent disclosures for innovations created by their inventors affected by the ruling, relative to their patent disclosures for innovations created by their unaffected inventors. Our results suggest that the assignment of intellectual property rights and the potential for hold up problems between employees and their employers can affect disclosure decisions.

The patent system grants inventors temporary monopoly rights in exchange for a public disclosure detailing their innovation. These disclosures are meant to allow others to recreate and build on the patented innovation. We examine how the quality of these disclosures affects follow-on innovation. We use the plausibly exogenous assignment to patent applications of patent examiners who differ in their enforcement of disclosure requirements as a source of variation in disclosure quality. We find that some examiners are significantly more lenient with respect to patent disclosure quality requirements, and that patents granted by these examiners include significantly lower-quality disclosures. These patents generate significantly less follow-on innovation.

There is limited empirical evidence about when and why individuals incur costs to acquire information about a firm that is not publicly available, which we refer to as private information acquisition. This lack of evidence is due in large part to the difficulty of observing private information acquisition. To overcome this difficulty, we use Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for information that is not otherwise publicly available. We find that the perception of information asymmetry between managers and outsiders resulting from both proprietary and agency cost considerations triggers information acquisition via the FOIA process. A significant portion of FOIA search stems from non-investor groups, including law and intellectual property firms. Consistent with these stakeholders finding this information useful, we find that FOIA search is associated with changes in the competitive landscape and patent infringement and securities class action lawsuit filings.

We study the effect of proximity to corporate headquarters on the productivity of inventors and research and development (R&D) facilities, and the determinants of inventors and facilities’ proximity to headquarters. About half of sample inventors live within 40 miles of headquarters and about half of sample R&D facilities are located within 60 miles. Distant inventors and R&D facilities are less productive, and plausibly exogenous reductions in the travel time from inventors or facilities to headquarters increase their productivity and creativity. Inventors and facilities located farther away from headquarters are more likely to operate in locations with lower personal and corporate income tax rates, higher R&D tax credits, stronger local economies, and fewer nearby inventors not employed by the firm, relative to headquarters. Firms are more likely to employ distant inventors when they rely less on intangible assets for value creation and have less volatile performance. We conclude that proximity to headquarters increases inventor and R&D facility innovation production, and that firms and inventors balance the benefits of greater proximity against geographic costs and benefits when locating innovation activities.

We examine the effects of tax competition on domestic employment. We find that increases in corporate statutory tax rate differentials between domestic and foreign firms reduce domestic employment through the distinct channels of import competition and competition from foreign-owned domestic firms. These effects are stronger for domestic firms located in countries with less labor organization, non-service firms, firms with fewer intangible assets, and standalone firms. Tax competition appears to primarily affect domestic employment via changes in within-firm employment at smaller firms. Our results suggest that tax competition can affect domestic employment even when domestic capital or income is immobile.

We examine the relation between public firm presence and import competition. The information created by public firm presence may provide importers with insights they can use for competing with domestic firms. Consistent with this possibility, we document a positive relation between public firm presence and import competition. We find similar results when using differences in the expected costs of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act as a source of plausibly exogenous variation in public firm presence after the act. We use differences in the proportion of German firms reporting publicly around a major enforcement reform as a natural mechanism experiment, and find evidence that financial reporting is a channel through which public firm presence relates to import competition. Additional mechanism tests and a falsification test estimated in the United Kingdom, where public and most private firms report publicly, further support this inference. In total, our evidence is consistent with foreign competitors using the information created by public firm presence, including what public firms disclose in financial reports, to compete with domestic firms. Consequently, our results provide evidence of competitors using the proprietary information disclosed in financial reports to compete with the disclosing firms and of information frictions affecting trade.

Information asymmetry between firms and lenders is a key feature of the balance sheet channel of monetary policy transmission, which emphasizes how this friction can impede firms’ access to credit. We argue that the quality of firms accounting reports can play an important role in transmitting monetary policy by affecting information asymmetry with capital providers. Consistent with this prediction, we find that firms with lower accounting quality are more sensitive to monetary policy surprises. The effect of firms’ accounting quality on their equity market response to unexpected changes in monetary policy is more pronounced for firms with more growth opportunities, firms that are more financially constrained, firms with less tangible assets, and firms without a lending relationship, all of which are consistent with the balance sheet channel of monetary transmission. We conclude that firms’ accounting quality is an important determinant of the heterogeneity in their individual responses to monetary policy.

We find that firms’ tax planning exhibits strategic reactions: firms respond to changes in their industry-competitors’ tax planning by changing their own tax planning in the same direction. We document evidence of these strategic reactions in two distinct research settings that entail an exogenous increase and decrease in competitors’ tax planning. We also find evidence that strategic reactions stem from concerns about appearing more tax aggressive than industry competitors, some evidence that they stem from firms learning from the tax planning of their industry competitors, and no consistent evidence that they stem from leader-follower dynamics.

I examine the effects of proprietary information on corporate transparency and voluntary disclosure. To do so, I develop and validate two measures of firms’ reliance on trade secrecy: one based on 10-K disclosures and one based on subsequent litigation outcomes. I complement these measures by using the staggered passage of the Uniform Trade Secrets Act as a shock to trade secrecy. I find that firms that begin to rely more heavily on trade secrecy substitute increased voluntary disclosure of nonproprietary information for decreased disclosure of proprietary information. The total effect of trade secrecy is a decrease in corporate transparency.

We examine the relation between manager horizon and discretionary disclosure, using patenting as a measure of disclosure. Patenting reflects, in part, a manager’s decision to disclose the successful outcome of research and development (R&D). When a firm invests in R&D but does not patent, investors are unsure whether this reflects a failed R&D project or the manager choosing not to patent. We suggest that investors’ beliefs about a manager’s horizon—whether the manager seeks to maximize short-term stock price or long-term profits—moderates their reactions. When investors believe a manager’s horizon is short, they expect the manager to disclose successful outcomes and therefore discount nondisclosure more. We predict that managers will patent more per dollar of R&D spending when their horizons are short and that investors will discount the value of nondisclosing firms more when they believe the manager’s horizon is short. We find evidence consistent with these predictions.

We use the introduction of exchange-traded weather derivative contracts as a natural experiment to examine the relation between risk and incentives. Specifically, we examine how executives’ ability to hedge weather-related risk that was previously difficult and costly to manage influences the design of their incentive-compensation contracts. Using both traditional and fuzzy differences-in-differences research designs, we find that the CEOs of firms that are relatively more exposed to weather risk — and therefore stand to benefit the most from hedging this source of risk — receive less annual compensation and have fewer equity incentives following the introduction of weather derivatives. We attribute the former finding to a reduction in the risk premium that CEOs demand for exposure to firm risk. The latter finding suggests that uncertainty in firms’ operating environments and equity incentives are complements for our sample firms. Collectively, our results show that hedging corporate risk alters the nature of agency conflicts and influences the design of executives’ incentive-compensation contracts.

We find that firms’ tax planning exhibits strategic reactions: firms respond to changes in their industry-competitors’ tax planning by changing their own tax planning in the same direction. We document evidence of these strategic reactions in two distinct research settings that entail an exogenous increase and decrease in competitors’ tax planning. We also find evidence that strategic reactions stem from concerns about appearing more tax aggressive than industry competitors, some evidence that they stem from firms learning from the tax planning of their industry competitors, and no consistent evidence that they stem from leader-follower dynamics.