These papers are working drafts of research which often appear in final form in academic journals. The published versions may differ from the working versions provided here.
SSRN Research Paper Series
The Social Science Research Network’s Research Paper Series includes working papers produced by Stanford GSB the Rock Center.
You may search for authors and topics and download copies of the work there.
Transparency of quality in the healthcare sector primarily aims to facilitate patients’ care decisions, however, it also provides useful information to competing healthcare providers. We study how competitors respond to increased…
In this article we first summarize the specific plans articulated by seven major corporations for reducing their Corporate Carbon Footprints (abbreviated as CCF from hereon). Our sample is not intended to be representative of the…
This paper reviews the empirical methods used in the accounting literature to draw causal inferences. Similar to other social science disciplines, recent years have seen a burgeoning growth in the use of methods that seek to…
We find that financial reporting spurs consumer behavior. Using granular GPS data, we find that foot-traffic to firms’ commerce locations significantly increases in the days following their earnings announcements. Foot-traffic…
We examine whether and how firms structure their merger and acquisition (M&A) deals to avoid scrutiny from antitrust regulators. There are approximately 40% more M&As than expected bunching just below thresholds that trigger…
As governments around the world reaffirm their commitments to reduce carbon emissions at the national level, numerous global corporations have recently issued their own carbon reduction pledges. Such corporate “Net-Zero Club by…
The rapid transition to a decarbonized energy economy is widely believed to hinge on the rate of cost improvements for certain clean energy technologies, in particular renewable power and energy storage. This paper adopts the…
We study the role of financial flexibility on COVID-19 employment actions. Using daily data from March through May 2020 for 354 of the largest U.S. employers, we find that firms facing a negative demand shock were 28.8 percentage…
We combine U.S. Census data with SEC enforcement actions to examine employees’ outcomes, such as wages and turnover, before, during, and after periods of fraudulent financial reporting. We find that fraud firms’ employees lose…
We address whether analysts bias earnings forecast revisions and convey the bias using forecast revision consistency, i.e., the extent to which analyst reports with earnings forecast revisions include stock recommendation and…
This paper examines whether, when, and why job seekers use firms’ financial information in the job search process. We find first evidence of financial information’s relevance to job seekers by documenting a substantial increase in…
The lack of board diversity is one of the most controversial topics in corporate board governance. We investigate one important influence on diversity by studying whether shareholders value diversity on corporate boards in…
We develop an analytical framework to study experimental design in two-sided platforms. In the settings we consider, customers rent listings; rented listings are occupied for some amount of time, then become available. Platforms…
The rapid deployment of electric vehicles is widely viewed as a promising path towards decarbonizing the transportation sector. The pace at which electric vehicles will replace those with internal combustion engines will depend to…
We examine whether a disclosure mandate for greenhouse gas emissions creates stakeholder pressure for firms to subsequently reduce their emissions. For UK-incorporated listed firms such a mandate was adopted in 2013. Using a…
We address whether mandatory forecasts of earnings announcement dates are informative and what are the informational tradeoffs between mandatory and voluntary forecasts. We find China mandatory forecasts predict actual earnings…
One of the hallmarks of the SEC’s investigative process is that it is shrouded in secrecy — only the SEC staff, high-level managers of the company being investigated, and outside counsel are typically aware of active…
While the shareholder benefits of audits are well documented, evidence on whether audits can facilitate opportunistic behavior by corporate insiders is scarce. In this paper, we examine whether the audit process facilitate one…
This paper reports on the results of a global field study conducted in 2014 and 2015 among leading manufacturers from a wide range of industries. It provides insights on managerial practices that concern production sourcing and on…
We develop a measure of how information events impact investors’ perceptions of firms’ riskiness. We derive this measure from an option-pricing model where investors anticipate an announcement containing information on the mean…