We show that lenders join a U.S. commercial credit bureau when information asymmetries between incumbents and entrants create an adverse selection problem that hinders market entry. Lenders also delay joining when information asymmetries protect them from competition in existing markets,...

We study how short-term changes in institutional owner attention affect managers’ short-term disclosure choices. Holding institutional ownership constant and controlling for industry-quarter effects, we find that managers respond to attention by increasing the number of forecasts and 8-K...

This paper provides evidence of strategic complementarities in lenders’ contract terms in SME financing. To isolate this strategic effect from lenders’ joint reaction to unobserved common shocks to fundamentals, we exploit the staggered entry of lenders into an information sharing platform....

We find that Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) had two significant effects on the audit market for nonpublic entities. The first short-run effect stems from inelastic labor supply coupled with an audit demand shock from public companies. As a result, private companies reduced their use of attested financial...

I examine how credit reporting affects where firms access credit and how lenders contract with them. I use within firm-time and lender-time tests that exploit lenders joining a credit bureau and sharing information in a staggered pattern. I find information sharing reduces relationship-switching...

We study how small and medium enterprise (SME) lenders react to information about their competitors’ contracting decisions. To isolate this learning from lenders’ joint reaction to unobserved common shocks to fundamentals, we exploit the staggered entry of lenders into an information sharing...

Using a dataset covering 3 million commercial borrower financial statements, we document a substantial, nearly monotonic decline in banks’ use of attested financial statements (AFS) in lending over the past two decades. Two market forces help explain this trend. First, technological advances...

We document that the deregulation of bank branching restrictions in theUnited States triggered a reallocation across sectors, with end effectson state-level volatility. This change in state-level volatility cannotbe explained simply by shifts in sector-level returns and volatility. Areallocation...