We examine the impact of regulatory scrutiny on mutual fund disclosures. Based on a sample of 16,161 comment letter conversations between the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Investment Management and mutual funds from 2004 to 2019, we find that: (i) while comment letters...

We study how the automation of information acquisition activities in the asset management industry impacts the role humans play in such activities. We find that machine-based automation of SEC filing downloads frees up the human workforce and allows humans to research a broader set of portfolio...

Mutual funds’ switches to monthly holding disclosures reduce the efficiency of corporate investments. Consistent with a crowding-out mechanism, the evidence suggests that monthly portfolio disclosures discourage information production activities by other market participants and, consequently,...

We examine the extent to which current operating cash flows are incorporated in future earnings targets in executive compensation. Using target and actual compensation earnings per share (EPS) disclosed in proxy statements for large U.S. public companies, we find that revision of the following...

We propose a simple framework for understanding accounting-based stock return regularities. A firm's accounting reports provide noisy information about hidden economic states that evolve according to a Markov process. In response to the accounting reports, a representative Bayesian investor...

We examine firms' financial reporting practices during the missing months that are induced by fiscal year changes and not covered by regular quarters. We find that firms tend to report much lower income for the missing months than for adjacent quarters, mainly by recording higher operating...

This study examines the credibility of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports and the role of external assurance on CSR reports. Based on a sample of listed firms in Taiwan, we find that the issuance of CSR reports is not associated with a lower incidence, or frequency, of future...

We study how information disclosure affects financial intermediation when the payoff to the long-term investment is risky. The analysis is based on a business-cycle version of the bank run model wherein a bank provides risk sharing to demand depositors who experience unobservable shocks to their...