Urooj Khan

Real Activity Forecasts Using Loan Portfolio Information

To extend and monitor loans, banks collect detailed and proprietary information about the financial prospects of their customers, many of whom are local businesses and households. Therefore, banks’ loan portfolios contain potentially useful information about local economic conditions. We investigate the association between information in loan portfolios and local economic conditions. Using a sample of U.S. commercial banks from 1990:Q1 to 2013:Q4, we document that information in loan portfolios aggregated to the state level is associated with current and future changes in statewide economic conditions. Furthermore, the provision for loan and lease losses contains information incremental to leading indicators of state-level economic activity and recessions. Loan portfolio information also helps to improve predictions of economic conditions at more granular levels, such as at the commuting zone level. We discuss the relevance of these findings for economic analysis and forecasting, and the relation of our study to prior work on the informativeness of accounting information about the macroeconomy.

Tax Avoidance and Future Profitability

Do firm managers invest the savings from tax avoidance in positive net present value projects that enhance future profitability or divert them towards perquisite consumption, rent extraction, and value destroying projects? We indirectly investigate this question by testing whether tax avoidance moderates the association between current and future profitability. Consistent with the negative implications of tax avoidance (e.g. rent extraction) we document that, on average, the main components of current profitability: margins, utilization of assets and operating liability leverage, result in lower future profitability for tax aggressive firms as compared to firms that are not tax aggressive. Further, the negative effect of lower margins is more robust and persistent than the impact of inefficient asset utilization and operating liability leverage. These results persist in various contexts that mitigate or exacerbate rent extraction, such as the existence of foreign operations, better governance structure, more transparency, industry leadership position, and across corporate life cycle stages.

The SEC's Enforcement Record against Auditors

We investigate the effectiveness of regulatory oversight exercised by the SEC against auditors over the years 1996-2009. The evidence suggests that the SEC is significantly less likely to name a Big N auditor as a defendant, after controlling for both the severity of the violation and for the characteristics of companies more likely to be audited by Big N auditors. Further, when the SEC does charge Big N auditors, the SEC (i) is less likely to impose harsher penalties on the Big N; and (ii) is less likely to name a Big N audit firm relative to individual Big N partners. Moreover, the SEC relies overwhelmingly on administrative proceedings, instead of the tougher civil proceedings, against auditors. One interpretation of these patterns is that the SEC’s enforcement against auditors is relatively mild. Other interpretations of these results are also discussed. Though private litigation against auditors is associated with a loss of market share for the auditor, there is no evidence of such product market penalty subsequent to SEC action.

The Effect of Mandatory Disclosure on Market Inefficiencies: Evidence from Statement of Financial Accounting Standard Number 161

Prior research finds that unrealized gains/losses on cash flow hedges are negatively associated with future earnings, and that investors and analysts fail to anticipate this association. These studies speculate that this mispricing is due to either poor derivatives disclosures or the accounting model for cash flow hedges. We examine whether enhanced mandatory derivatives disclosures set forth in FAS 161 improve users’ understanding of firms’ hedging activities and offer three main findings. First, we find that this mispricing does not persist after FAS 161. Second, we find that the correction of mispricing is greatest when disclosure might help investors most. Finally, we find that analyst forecast accuracy improves after FAS 161. Overall, our results suggest that the enhanced mandatory derivative disclosures required by FAS 161 improved users’ understanding of the effects of derivative and hedging activities on future firm performance and firm value – and consequently mitigated investor mispricing.

Bank Lending Standards and Borrower Accounting Conservatism

Bank lending standards vary over time. Periods in which firms find it relatively easy to borrow are followed by periods in which banks scrutinize borrowers more and tighten lending. We predict that changes in lending standards affect the accounting conservatism of bank-dependent firms. Using (i) a natural experiment that leads to certain banks tightening lending standards for plausibly exogenous reasons, and (ii) time series variation in economy-wide bank lending standards, we find that borrowers increase their asymmetric timely loss recognition in response to the tightening of lending standards. Further, riskier borrowers, borrowers less likely to violate loan covenants, and borrowers whose banks tighten lending standards to a greater extent, display larger increases in conservatism following the tightening of lending standards. These results suggest that borrowers internalize the costs and benefits of increasing conservatism. Finally, borrowers do not seem to decrease conservatism immediately after the lending standards are loosened. Overall, our results illuminate a commonly observed banking phenomenon that can influence firms’ incentives to recognize losses, suggesting that developments in the banking sector can shape the information produced by firms in the real sector.

The Role of Taxes in the Disconnect Between Corporate Performance and Economic Growth

We investigate the relation between the growth in corporate profits and the overall U.S. economy, focusing on the impact of the U.S. corporate tax regime on this relation. We document that the growth of corporate profits, on average, has outpaced the growth of the economy and this disconnect increases as the difference between the corporate income tax rate of the U.S. and the other OECD countries increases. The underlying mechanism is fewer corporate profits being channeled into subsequent domestic investments when the U.S. tax rate is relatively higher, leading to lower economic growth. Our findings have implications for policy setters.

Tax Avoidance and Dupont Measures of Future Performance

To date, there is mixed evidence on the implications of tax avoidance on firm value as measured by Tobin’s q or stock price reactions. The take-away from prior literature is that increased opportunities for rent extraction associated with tax avoidance (e.g., in low governance firms), might negatively affect the after-tax value of the firm. We revisit this topic by investigating the association between tax avoidance and firm fundamentals (leverage, profitability, and asset utilization), using DuPont analysis. We document that tax avoidance unambiguously lowers future pretax accounting rates of return (i.e., return on equity, return on net operating assets, and return on operating assets), largely due to inefficient utilization of operating assets and operating liabilities. These results also hold in different contexts that mitigate rent extraction, including when firms have foreign operations and good governance.