Working Papers

This paper provides early evidence on the integration and impact of Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) in accounting at the accountant and task levels. Using a multi-method approach, we first identify heterogeneous adoption patterns,…

Allocating capital to investment projects is one of a manager’s most critical responsibilities. However, such decisions are shaped by managers’ own beliefs and risk preferences, which can differ from those of diversified shareholders. To study…

We develop a model of disclosure timing in which the firm can commit to disclose its revenues at a fixed date (a time-based disclosure policy) or after a certain number of transactions have occurred (a news arrival-based disclosure policy). We…

We examine whether access to specialized business courts that are more proficient in resolving contractual disputes influences the design of firms’ supply contracts. We use the staggered creation of these courts in different states at different…

In recent years, U.S. public companies have increasingly begun to voluntarily disclose official workforce diversity data (i.e., EEO-1 reports), which they previously only confidentially filed with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission…

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, we observe that public firms subject to the regulation increase their disclosure of…

U.S. partnerships control more than $40 trillion in assets, vastly outnumber U.S. public firms, and contribute significantly to the U.S. tax non-compliance of pass-through entities, which is larger than the non-compliance of publicly traded…

Companies in various industries are under growing pressure to assess the costs of decarbonizing their operations. This paper develops a generic abatement cost concept to identify the cost-efficient combination of technological and operational…

The rapidly growing number of lithium-ion battery packs deployed in electric vehicles (EVs) entails enormous economic potential for used EV batteries to be redeployed in a second life application, e.g., for behind-the-meter stationary energy…

We study the tax payment and innovation consequences of limiting the tax deductibility of research and development (“R&D”) expenditures. Beginning in 2022, U.S. companies are required to capitalize and amortize R&D rather than immediately…

While agency theory has strongly influenced real-world compensation plans, most observed compensation plans are not explicit about their economic assumptions. In this study, we derive closed-form expressions to infer the cost of effort, the…

We examine the effects of stock market access, and in particular trading hours, on retail investment performance. Using discontinuities around time zone borders, we find that plausibly exogenous decreases in waking trading hours are associated…

We study how the assignment of intellectual property rights for successful innovations between inventors and their employers affect inventor-employer matching, the generality of innovation, and innovation disclosure. To do so, we examine the…

We identify a model of early-stage company growth persistence. Using seven commercial high growth company lists (either a Top 500 or Top 100 list of companies), we find that approximately 30% of companies remain on these lists for two consecutive…

We examine the role of assurance — third-party verification — on carbon accounting quality. We develop a measure of carbon accounting quality based on the deviation of reported emissions from a model-based expected level and use two other survey-…

Using debit and credit card data, we find a one standard-deviation increase in firms’ earnings surprise is linked to a 3% or $5.6 billion increase in aggregate quarterly consumption of local households near the disclosing firms’ headquarters. The…

Innovative public firms sell 9.6% (615) more patents in the last month, relative to the first half of the fiscal year. Consistent with reporting incentives driving these sales, they are more pronounced among firms with strong incentives to meet…

We analyze the efficiency and efficacy of human and intellectual capital investment to better understand the effects of social investment. Existing literature in the corporate setting lacks analysis regarding the impact of human and intellectual…

We examine how the efficiency of the judicial system impacts corporate innovation. To do so, we exploit a pilot program introduced by the U.S. Congress in 2011, which allowed judges with expertise(as opposed to randomly selected judges) to…

Current corporate disclosures regarding carbon emissions lack commonly accepted accounting rules. The carbon accrual accounting system described here takes the rules of historical cost accounting for operating assets as a template for generating…