This study examines the relationship between the mandatory disclosure of auditor tenure under AS 3101 and the cost of debt. We find that yield spreads on seasoned bond trades decrease after AS 3101 as auditor tenure increases. Cross-sectional tests suggest that the effect is stronger for...

The discount control mechanisms that closed-end funds often choose to adopt before IPO are supposedly implemented to narrow the difference between share price and net asset value, We find evidence that non-discretionary discount control mechanisms such as mandatory continuation votes serve as...

We use census-like data and a regression discontinuity design to study the labor market impacts of a signal provided by a government-sponsored award given to top-performing students on a nationwide college exit exam in Colombia. Students who can signal their high level of specific skills earn...

We investigate the deterrence effects of a firm-targeted sanction and a politician-targeted sanction deployed by Mainland China against Taiwan to deter support for “Taiwan Independence”. In the short-run, we find that the signal sent by the targeted sanctions generated deterrence to firms...

E-commerce certification can signal a firm's quality, reducing information frictions and incentivizing quality upgrading. This paper examines the effect of certification on quality upgrading both econometrically and using a novel dynamic structural model. To this end, we collected data from...

We study a hierarchical Bayesian persuasion game with a sender, a receiver, and several potential intermediaries, generalizing the framework of Kamenica and Gentzkow (2011). The sender must be persuasive through a hierarchy of intermediaries to reach the final receiver, whose action affects all...

Principal-agent interactions in which the principal signals prosociality may achieve higher levels of trust and reciprocity if both parties care about social esteem. However, it is unclear whether such a separating equilibrium exists when the agent sends the signal first. This is relevant...

Consumers can prefer a price disclosure format that can cost them. Across a variety of products, we find that many consumers prefer partitioned price disclosures (i.e., separating charges into multiple line items without totals) to consolidated disclosures (i.e., those displaying the total price...

A designer relies on a costly screening device to allocate a set of goods, aiming to maximize a social welfare function. We provide conditions for one screening device to dominate another. We show that the performance of a screening device depends on two channels: (i) targeting effectiveness...