Yiwei Dou

Employee Ownership and Firm Disclosure

Evidence suggests that managers have an incentive to keep information opaque with the market when negotiating with employees who can extract above-market rents from the firm. We argue that employee ownership should mitigate this incentive to extract above-market rents and, in turn, alleviate the firm’s need to keep information opaque. Consistent with our expectations and using a number of proxies for disclosure, we find that firms whose non-manager employees have strong bargaining power provide less disclosure. However, this effect is mitigated, the greater the equity in company common stock held by non-manager employees. Our results suggest a novel capital market benefit to employee ownership. Specifically, employee ownership for non-manager employees appears to benefit the firm by not only aligning goals between the firm and its employees, but by also increasing disclosure from the firm to all of its stakeholders by mitigating the firm’s need to keep information opaque.

Accounting Conservatism and Performance Covenants: A Signaling Approach

This study examines the relation between performance covenants in private debt contracting and conservative accounting under adverse selection. We find that under severe adverse selection (i.e., high information asymmetry), accounting conservatism and performance covenants act as complements to signal that the borrower is unlikely to appropriate wealth from the lender. No such relation obtains in a low information asymmetry regime. We further show that in the high information asymmetry regime, borrowers with high levels of conservatism and tight performance covenants generally enjoy lower interest rate spreads than borrowers with low levels of conservatism and loose performance covenants. Consistent with our signaling theory, in the high information asymmetry regime, borrowers with high levels of conservatism and tight performance covenants are less likely to make abnormal payouts to shareholders. Our empirical results are robust to alternative measures of conservatism and covenant restrictiveness.

The Effect of Credit Competition on Banks’ Loan Loss Provisions

Exploiting differential interstate-branching deregulation across contiguous counties of adjacent states, we investigate the effect of entry threat on incumbent banks’ loan-loss provisions. Incumbents exposed to entry threat have offsetting incentives; lower provisions make their loan-underwriting quality appear better, deterring entry, but make local economic conditions appear better, encouraging entry. We find that the incentive to increase apparent loan-underwriting quality dominates on average. We further find that this incentive is stronger in counties with a higher proportion of heterogeneous loans, while the other incentive dominates in counties with both low heterogeneous loans and highly volatile economic conditions.

Individual Large Shareholders, Earnings Management, and Capital-Market Consequences: LARGE SHAREHOLDERS, EARNINGS MANAGEMENT

Using a large hand�?collected sample of all blockholders (ownership ≥ 5%) of S&P 1500 firms for the years 2002–2009, we first document significant individual blockholder effects on earnings management (accrual�?based earnings management, real earnings management, and restatements). This association is driven primarily by these large shareholders influencing rather than selecting firms’ financial reporting practices. Second, the market’s reaction to earnings announcements suggests that investors recognize the heterogeneity in blockholders’ influence on earnings management. The results highlight the highly individualized effects of blockholders and a mechanism through which shareholders impact reported earnings.

Corruption in Bank Lending: The Role of Timely Loan Loss Recognition

Building on the recent literature on corruption in bank lending, we examine the effect of country-level timely loan loss recognition by banks on lending corruption using a unique World Bank dataset that covers more than 3,600 firms across 44 countries. We find evidence consistent with timely loan loss recognition constraining lending corruption because it increases the likelihood of problem loans being uncovered earlier. In further analysis, we find timely loan loss recognition to be less associated with reduced corruption in countries where there is significant government ownership in the banking system and deposit insurance schemes. This evidence is consistent with timely loan loss recognition being less of a deterrent to lending corruption when banks are less disciplined by their capital providers. & 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The Real Effects of FAS 166/167 on Banks’ Mortgage Approval and Sale Decisions

We examine the real effects of FAS 166 and FAS 167 on banks’ loan‐level mortgage approval and sale decisions. Effective in 2010, these standards tightened the accounting for securitizations and consolidation of securitization entities, respectively, causing banks to recognize an estimated

Information Externalities of Disclosure Regulation: Evidence from SFAS 161

811 billion of securitized assets on balance sheet. We find that banks that recognize more securitized assets exhibit larger decreases in mortgage approval rates and larger increases in mortgage sale rates. These effects significantly exceed those of banks’ off–balance sheet securitized assets, consistent with our results being driven by the consolidation of securitization entities rather than by securitization per se. We conduct tests that help rule out the financial crisis as an alternative explanation for our results. Further analyses suggest that mechanisms underlying the results include consolidating banks’ reduced regulatory capital adequacy, increased market discipline, and consequent desire not to recognize high‐risk mortgages on balance sheet.

Health-Insurer Bargaining Power and Firms' Incentives to Manage Earnings: Evidence from an Economic Shock

Effective in 2009, SFAS 161 requires enhanced disclosures about derivative use and hedging activities. We test for changes to the information environment of firms whose disclosure policy is unaffected by this standard directly. Using a sample of non-users of derivatives, we find an increase in stock liquidity after their critical customers expand derivative disclosures under SFAS 161. The effect persists for one year and becomes insignificant in subsequent years as the firms dial back their voluntary disclosure. The effect is also more salient for firms that have stronger economic links with their customers and for firms whose customers exhibit more significant improvements in derivative disclosures. The findings suggest that the mandatory derivative disclosures due to SFAS 161 lead to short-term positive information externalities along supply chains.

Evidence on the Real Effects of Accounting: The Case of Employee Stock Option Expensing

Health-insurance premiums account for a significant portion of the cost base of U.S. corporations. A recent study finds that health-insurance premiums increase for firms that experience positive profit shocks (Dafny 2010), suggesting that the U.S. health-insurance market is not perfectly competitive. Motivated by this finding and the economic importance of health-insurance premiums, this is the first study to examine firms’ earnings-management incentives in the face of insurance carriers with strong bargaining power. We use an innovative dataset for a large sample of U.S. firms with detailed information on insurance premiums and insurance-plan characteristics. Employing an economic shock to insurance firms’ bargaining power and difference-in-differences tests, we find that firms manage their reported earnings downward when insurance providers have strong bargaining power. We further show that this effect is more pronounced in settings in which there are ex-ante reasons to expect stronger incentives to manage earnings downward. We also provide preliminary evidence suggesting that downward earnings management has the intended effect of mitigating future increases in health-insurance premiums. Our analyses highlight an inefficient health-insurance market as an important determinant of firms’ financial reporting choices

Relationship-Specificity, Contract Enforceability, and Income Smoothing

This study uses the real effects theory to investigate the effects of accounting for employee stock options (ESOs) on corporate investment. We document that in the period before the required expensing of the fair value of ESO costs, firms overinvested in risky projects. We attribute the suboptimal investment policy to the favorable accounting treatment of ESOs. We further find that the incremental rate of return on abnormal investment is negative, suggesting that the removal of the accounting distortion would improve investment efficiency and firm value. Consistent with this prediction, we document a positive association between abnormal investment and the stock price reaction to an event that took place during the deliberation of SFAS No. 123R, a new accounting rule that eliminated the preferential accounting treatment of ESOs. Taken together, our evidence lends support to the theory that accounting has real effects on corporate investment. JEL classification: G14; G24; G28; J24; J33; J63; K22; K23; M41