Short Selling and Earnings Management: A Controlled Experiment

During 2005 to 2007, the SEC ordered a pilot program in which one‐third of the Russell 3000 index were arbitrarily chosen as pilot stocks and exempted from short‐sale price tests. Pilot firms’ discretionary accruals and likelihood of marginally beating earnings targets decrease during this period, and revert to pre‐experiment levels when the program ends. After the program starts, pilot firms are more likely to be caught for fraud initiated before the program, and their stock returns better incorporate earnings information. These results indicate that short selling, or its prospect, curbs earnings management, helps detect fraud, and improves price efficiency.     

Employee Relations and the Likelihood of Occurrence of Corporate Financial Distress

Abstract:   In this paper, we investigate the association of employee relations with the occurrence of onset of financial distress. We argue that if adverse economic conditions arise, firms that have maintained good employee relations will be more effective in obtaining temporary labor concessions. As a result, firms with good employee relations, to the extent they are dependent on labor in the conduct of business operations, should be more likely to avoid the onset of future financial distress. The empirical findings we document support this prior.     

The unintended real effects of short selling in an emerging market

Exploiting the staggered removal of short-sale bans in China, we document unintended real effects of allowing short selling in an emerging market featured by concentrated ownership and weak investor protection. Pilot firms have worse short-term and long-term market performances after the removal of short-sale bans. Additionally, pilot firms undertake less risk and have worse performance following the launch of the program. The effect is stronger when controlling shareholders' private benefit is large and when corporate governance is weak. Faced with increased short selling threats, pilot firms cut capital investments and R&D expenditures, reduce equity financing, and lower debt ratios. Contrary to prior studies showing that short selling encourages value-enhancing risky investments in developed markets, our findings suggest that in emerging markets such as China, short selling can result in value losses by inducing firms to forgo profitable risky projects.     

Tick Size and Financial Reporting Quality in Small-Cap Firms: Evidence from a Natural Experiment

Using a natural experiment (the SEC's 2016 Tick Size Pilot Program), we investigate the effects of an increase in tick size on financial reporting quality. The tick size pilot program reduces algorithmic trading (AT) and increases fundamental investors’ information acquisition and trading activities. This in turn increases the scrutiny of managers’ financial reporting choices and reduces their incentives to engage in misreporting. Using a difference-in-differences research design, we find a significant decrease in the magnitude of discretionary accruals, a significant reduction in the likelihood of just meeting or beating analysts’ forecasts, and a marginally significant decrease in restatements for the treated firms in the pilot program. Furthermore, we find that the change in financial reporting quality is concentrated in treated firms experiencing decreases in AT and increases in information acquisition activities. We also find that the mispricing of accruals is significantly lower for treated firms. Taken together, our results suggest that an increase in tick size has a causal effect on firms’ financial reporting quality.     

Enforceability of non-compete covenants,discretionary investments,and financial reporting practices: Evidence from a natural experiment

Non-compete covenants are widely used in employment contracts to promote employee stability. Using legal amendments of non-compete enforceability as a natural experiment, we find that as non-compete enforceability increases, firms display an increased likelihood of meeting short-term earnings benchmarks, lower discretionary expenditures, and declining future performance. These effects are more pronounced when CEOs have lower ability or shorter tenures, and when firms have more growth opportunities or operate in localized industries. Our results suggest that managers actively adapt investment and financial reporting practices to the changing environment that affects their contractual relations with firms.     

Do political connection disruptions increase labor costs in a government-dominated market? Evidence from publicly listed companies in China

This paper investigates whether the disruption of political connections increases labor costs among Chinese listed firms. Using the Communist Party of China's Rule No. 18 as an exogenous shock that forces firms to lose their politically connected independent directors, we find that the disruption of political connections is associated with an increase in labor costs (both in terms of aggregate labor costs per firm and average labor costs per employee) and an increase in employee turnover. Such increases do not lead to labor productivity improvements, and cannot be attributed to changes in corporate policies or the composition of labor forces after Rule No. 18. We also find that firms with higher unemployment risk and skilled labor risk increase their labor costs to a larger extent. Our results are robust to alternative labor cost measures, controlling for potential confounding events, and alternative political connection channels. Our study shows an unintended labor market consequence—increases in labor costs—of political connection disruptions for firms that are adversely affected by such disruptions.     

员工薪酬竞争力与上市公司员工持股

基于员工持股相关理论,本文考察了员工薪酬竞争力对我国上市公司是否实施员工持股的可能影响。实证结果显示,员工薪酬竞争力越弱,企业越可能实施员工持股;且员工薪酬竞争力越弱,员工持股的锁定期限越长、覆盖人数越多以及员工股比例越高。进一步研究发现,员工薪酬竞争力与实施员工持股可能性的负相关关系,只在外部劳动力市场流动性高和内部人力资源成本较高以及融资约束较为严重的样本中显著。上述研究发现表明,上市公司的员工持股在一定程度上是企业在面临外部劳动力市场流动性压力和内部较高人力资源成本以及融资约束时,缓解员工薪酬竞争力不足的现实途径。本文的研究结论为完善上市公司员工持股制度提供了经验证据支持,同时拓展了员工持股、职工薪酬及收入分配等领域的相关研究文献。     

Do employee-friendly firms invest more efficiently? Evidence from labor investment efficiency

We investigate the impact of employee treatment on labor investment efficiency. We provide evidence that employee-friendly treatment is significantly associated with lower deviations of labor investment from the level justified by economic fundamentals, i.e., higher labor investment efficiency. The effect of employee treatment on labor investment efficiency is stronger for firms that are human-capital-intensive, with more skilled labor and knowledge capital, and those that face higher product market competition. Using the 2008–2009 financial crisis as an external shock and applying the difference-in-difference method, we also show that employee-friendly firms have higher labor investment efficiency in the post-financial crisis period, but experience more inefficient labor investments during the crisis. Our results are robust to placebo tests, selection bias, propensity score matching, alternative explanations, alternative proxies for both employee treatment and labor investment efficiency as well as the adjustment for using residuals as dependent variables, additional control variables, and various approaches in addressing endogeneity issues.     

Employee turnover likelihood and earnings management: evidence from the inevitable disclosure doctrine

We present evidence that managers consider employee turnover likelihood in their accounting choices. Our tests exploit U.S. state courts’ staggered recognition of the inevitable disclosure doctrine (IDD), which reduces employees’ ability to switch employers. We find a significant decrease in upward earnings management for firms headquartered in states that recognize the IDD, relative to firms headquartered elsewhere. The effect of the IDD is stronger for firms relying more on human capital and for firms whose employees have higher ex-ante turnover likelihood, confirming the employee retention channel. Overall, our results support the view that retaining employees is an important motive for corporate earnings management.     

劳动保护、社保压力与企业违约风险——基于《社会保险法》实施的研究

本文利用2011年《社会保险法》实施的政策冲击所造成的准自然实验情境构建双重差分模型,考察了劳动保护对上市公司债务违约风险的影响。研究发现,劳动保护加强后,劳动密集型企业的违约风险显著提升了约1.5%。在此基础上,进一步检验了劳动保护影响企业违约风险的渠道,发现劳动保护提高了企业的经营性负债水平,并最终提高了违约风险。此外,在国有企业、融资约束水平较高、信息披露水平较低和创新水平较低的企业,劳动保护对企业违约风险的影响更加显著。本文拓展了劳动保护经济后果的研究,也为评价《社会保险法》的政策后果提供了新的经验证据。本研究可为"新冠"疫情期间政府制定政策减免企业社保支出提供参考。     

Accounting for employee flows

This paper examines employee flows and the association with firm earnings and interest rates. We use administrative employer–employee matched panel data from Denmark spanning 17 years and hence exploit actual data on employee arrivals (labor inflows) and departures (labor outflows). Three main findings emerge. First, we condition by firms’ economic conditions. Departures predict earnings increases for prior-year loss firms, while they predict earnings decreases for prior-year profit firms, suggesting that this conditioning can help explain the mixed results in the literature. Arrivals predict earnings increases, though only for prior-year profit firms. These effects are stronger for high-paid employees than for low-paid ones. Second, the effects of departures are generally larger than the effects of arrivals, consistent with departures disrupting operations. Third, we find that lenders price employee flow information but only for departures of high-paid employees, despite the predictive ability of the flow of other employees for future earnings. Overall our results suggest that employee flows predict firm financial performance but are only partially priced by lenders.     

Capital market frictions and human capital investment: Evidence from workplace safety around regulation SHO

This paper examines the effect of capital market frictions on firms’ workplace safety. Using Regulation SHO as a natural experiment, we find a significant increase in work-related injury rates of pilot firms. The effect is stronger for firms in more competitive industries and with high financial constraints, and weaker for firms whose employees have high negotiating power and with good corporate governance. Further tests suggest that managers’ myopia shifts their focus away from investments in workplace safety when workplace safety is not related to firm performance. Overall, the results highlight how capital market frictions affect firms’ investment in human capital.     

Charitable inclination and the chief executive officer's pay package

Using chief executive officers’ (CEOs’) lifetime nonemployment experience in prominent charitable organizations to create a proxy for CEO charitable inclination, I find that charitably inclined CEOs receive a significant pay premium. The pay premium sensitivity to CEO charitable inclination is particularly pronounced for male, external, and specialist CEOs who are employed at firms that are undiversified, larger, less debt reliant, poor performing, facing high product‐market competition, and that keep nonmanipulative financial statements and demonstrate high inclination to social responsibility in the area of diversity, employee relations, and internal governance. This research contributes to the broader debate on labor market pricing of CEO characteristics.     

Short sellers and insider trading profitability: A natural experiment

We examine the impact of short sellers on insider trading profitability using a natural experiment of a pilot program which relaxed short-selling constraints for randomly selected pilot stocks. We find that pilot firms experienced a significant decrease in insider trading profitability during the pilot program. The results are more pronounced for the pilot firms with poor information quality, and for the pilot firms without corporate restrictions on insider trading. Our evidence suggests that short sellers serve an important market disciplinary role by reducing insider trading profitability.     

Short selling threat and real activity manipulation: Evidence from a natural experiment

In this paper, we investigate whether and how short selling threat affects real activity manipulation. Using a regulatory experiment (Regulation SHO) that removes short selling restrictions on randomly selected pilot firms, we find that real activity manipulation is significantly reduced for pilot firms in response to increased short selling threat during the experiment period. The reduction effect is stronger for pilot firms with a transparent financial reporting strategy, a high level of negative financial reporting sentiment, and bad news. Our finding confirms short sellers' monitoring effect on opportunistic behavior, even for real activity manipulation that is difficult to detect.     

Employee‐friendly practices,product market competition and firm value

In this paper, we examine whether employee‐friendly practices are associated with product market competition, and whether firm value is related to employee‐friendly practices and product market competition. Using a large sample of US firms, we find positive and significant associations between employee friendliness and product market competition, and between firm value and employee friendliness when product market competition is high, consistent with the value creation theory. Both positive relations hold when we account for corporate governance. In addition, using the list of Fortune's ‘100 Best Companies to Work For’ as an alternative measure of employee‐friendly policies, we find firms in more competitive industries are more likely to treat their workers favourably. Furthermore, we find that the market reaction is more positive when firms in more competitive industries are selected for the Fortune list.     

Employee relations and stock price crash risk: Evidence from employee lawsuits

In this paper, we examine the effect of firms' employee relations, measured by the number of employee lawsuits divided by the total number of employees, on stock price crash risk. Firms with higher employee lawsuit ratios tend to have higher stock price crash risk. Our results are robust after addressing possible endogeneity and using alternative measures of employee relations and stock price crash risk. We also find that the association between the employee lawsuit ratio and stock price crash risk is less prominent for state-owned enterprises, for firms with stringent external monitoring, and for firms with positive earnings news. Finally, earnings aggressiveness appears to be the channel through which the employee lawsuit ratio affects stock price crash risk. Collectively, our study is in line with the stakeholder theory, and highlights the importance of employee lawsuit for preventing crash of stock price.     

Local religiosity,workplace safety,and firm value

This paper examines the effect of local religiosity on employee treatment, proxied by workplace safety incidents. Using the establishment-level data compiling on the incidents of work-related injuries, we find that employees of the establishments in more religious counties get less injured than those in less religious counties. We further find that a reduction in occupational accidents is more evident for establishments in counties dominated by one religious denomination, strengthening our argument on community solidarity and homophily stemming from religious networks. Firms whose establishments are located in high religiosity counties are less likely to violate workplace conduct and more likely to take workplace safety measures. Moreover, firms with more work-related injuries exhibit poorer firm performance. Overall, our findings suggest that local religiosity has a value implication through human capital protection.     

Labor Rights,Venture Capital,and Firm Performance

We investigate the role of labor unions in the performance of venture capital (VC)‐backed firms. Using a large sample of initial public offering firms from 1983 to 2013, we find that VC‐backed firms in highly unionized industries have lower Tobin's Q and are less likely to survive. This effect is robust to endogeneity concerns and to controlling for industry and firm characteristics. The findings suggest that strong labor rights impede innovative firms’ performance and survival, thereby adversely affecting innovation, economic growth, and employment.     

Workforce diversity and financial statement readability

The Securities and Exchange Commission has associated readability with a range of linguistic features largely determined by the language style of the information producers, including sentence length and the use of personal pronouns, familiar words, surplus words and active voice. We examine the impact of a firm's workforce ethnic diversity on its financial statement readability. Based on linguistic literature, we argue that a more diverse workforce increases the linguistic heterogeneity of the inputs into financial statements, hindering financial statement readability. We show that financial statement readability decreases with the ethnic diversity of the workforce, and that this effect is more pronounced for firms located in a community with a high crime rate or low social capital. We also find that the market reacts less to the earnings surprises of firms with less readable financial statements. We further find that the impact of white-collar employee diversity on readability is greater than that of blue-collar employee diversity. The results of robustness tests suggest that workplace diversity does not reduce firms' overall information production quality, which rules out the alternative explanation that employee diversity hinders financial statement readability through increasing employee conflict and communication errors. Overall, our study suggests that workforce diversity is an important determinant of financial statement readability.