We investigate whether managers' personal political orientation helps explain tax avoidance at the firms they manage. Results reveal the intriguing finding that, on average, firms with top executives who lean toward the Republican Party actually engage in less tax avoidance than firms whose executives lean toward the Democratic Party. We also examine changes in tax avoidance around CEO turnovers and find corroborating evidence. Additionally, we find that political orientation is helpful in explaining top management team composition and CEO succession. Our paper extends theory and research by (1) illustrating how tax avoidance can serve as another measure of corporate risk taking and (2) using political orientation as a proxy for managerial conservatism, which is an ex ante measure of a manager's propensity toward risk. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Despite the rising use of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) ratings, there is substantial disagreement across rating agencies regarding what rating to give to individual firms. As what drives this disagreement is unclear, we examine whether a firm's ESG disclosure helps explain some of this disagreement. We predict and find that greater ESG disclosure actually leads to greater ESG rating disagreement. These findings hold using firm fixed effects, and using a difference-in-differences design with mandatory ESG disclosure shocks. We also find that raters disagree more about ESG outcome metrics than input metrics (policies), and that disclosure appears to amplify disagreement more for outcomes. Lastly, we examine consequences of ESG disagreement and find that greater ESG disagreement is associated with higher return volatility, larger absolute price movements, and a lower likelihood of issuing external financing. Overall, our findings highlight that ESG disclosure generally exacerbates ESG rating disagreement rather than resolving it.

I investigate whether corporate accountability reporting helps protect firm value. Specifically, I examine (1) whether corporate accountability reporting helps firms prevent the occurrence of high-profile misconduct (e.g., bribery, kickbacks, discrimination), and (2) whether prior corporate accountability reporting reduces the negative stock price reaction when high-profile misconduct does occur. Using multiple methods to address self-selection, I find that, on average, firms that report on their corporate accountability activities are less likely to engage in high-profile misconduct, consistent with the reporting process helping firms to manage their operations better. Additionally, I find that when high-profile misconduct does occur, firms that have previously issued corporate accountability reports experience a less negative stock price reaction, consistent with corporate accountability reports influencing perceptions of managerial intent, which, in turn, influences expected punishments.

Research summary: Investing a firm's resources in corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives remains a contentious issue. While research suggests firm financial performance is the primary driver of CEO dismissal, we propose that CSR will provide important additional context when interpreting a firm's financial performance. Consistent with this prediction, our results suggest that past CSR decisions amplify the negative relationship between financial performance and CEO dismissal. Specifically, we find that greater prior investments in CSR appear to expose CEOs of firms with poor financial performance to a greater risk of dismissal. In contrast, greater past investments in CSR appear to help shield CEOs of firms with good financial performance from dismissal. These findings provide novel insight into how CEOs' career outcomes may be affected by earlier CSR decisions. Managerial summary: In this study, we examined a potential personal consequence for CEOs related to corporate social responsibility (CSR). We explored the role prior investments in CSR play when a board evaluates the firm's financial performance and considers whether or not to fire the CEO. Our results suggest that while financial performance sets the overall tone of a CEO's evaluation, CSR amplifies that baseline evaluation. Specifically, our results suggest that greater past investments in CSR appear to (a) greatly increase the likelihood of CEO dismissal when financial performance is poor, and (b) somewhat reduce the likelihood of CEO dismissal when financial performance is good. Thus, striving to deliver profits in a socially responsible manner may have both positive and negative personal consequences. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

We investigate whether attitudes toward gambling help explain the occurrence of intentional misreporting. Similar to gambling, some financial reporting choices involve taking deliberate, speculative risks. We predict that in places where gambling is more socially acceptable, managers will be more likely to take financial reporting risks that increase the likelihood the financial statements will need to be restated. To test this prediction, we exploit geographic variation in local gambling attitudes and find that restatements due to intentional misreporting are more common in areas where gambling is more socially acceptable. This association is even stronger in situations where management is under greater pressure to misreport, including when the firm is close to meeting a performance benchmark, experiencing poor financial performance, or under investment‐related pressure. Furthermore, these results are robust to numerous tests to address omitted variables and endogeneity. Collectively, these findings suggest gambling attitudes help explain the incidence of intentional misreporting.

In this study, we examine whether sell-side security analysts gain access to value-relevant information through political connections. We measure analysts' political connections based on political contributions at the brokerage-house level. We argue that if brokerages are able to obtain private information through their political connections, then analysts at politically connected brokerages should issue more profitable stock recommendations, and this increased profitability should be more pronounced for politically sensitive stocks. Our evidence is consistent with these predictions. Analyses of recommendations issued surrounding the Affordable Care Act further support our main inferences. Moreover, our findings hold after we employ numerous tests to address correlated omitted variables and endogeneity. Collectively, these results suggest that brokerages obtain value-relevant, nonpublic information from their political connections. JEL Classifications: G24; G38; G14.

Research Summary Based on agency theory, CEOs with greater risk aversion should be given greater incentive‐based compensation to motivate risk taking. We explore whether new CEOs receive initial pay packages that follow this recommendation, or instead receive pay packages that mirror their risk preferences. Rather than finding support for the agency theory perspective, we find that new CEOs are compensated in the way that reinforces their existing risk preferences. Specifically, using a CEO's political orientation to capture relative risk tolerance, we find that conservative‐leaning CEOs receive relatively less performance‐based pay than their liberal‐leaning counterparts. Supplemental analyses suggest this occurs through both a matching and tailoring process, whereby boards offer similar pay packages from CEO‐to‐CEO, but modify them based on differences in risk tolerances. Managerial Summary When designing a new CEO's pay contract, what proportion of the total compensation should be guaranteed versus performance based? To encourage risk taking, most researchers suggest that CEOs with greater risk aversion should have a pay mix that is more heavily weighted toward performance‐based pay. We find that the opposite occurs; new CEOs who are more risk averse tend to receive relatively less performance‐based pay than new CEOs who are more risk tolerant. This appears to occur because CEOs are attracted to firms that offered the prior CEO a pay package that appeals to the new CEO's risk tolerance. Our results also suggest that risk‐seeking CEOs' strategic actions are more strongly influenced by performance‐based pay, while more risk‐averse CEOs seem relatively unaffected by pay mix.

Evidence suggests a large proportion of profitable U.S. firms have low effective tax rates (i.e., an ETR between 0 and 10%). Despite widespread interest in how firms avoid paying taxes, we do not know how most firms attain low ETRs and whether they are primarily benefiting from benign or aggressive tax positions. Using a research design that explicitly examines low ETR firms, we predict and find that the majority are primarily benefiting from a benign tax position: large net operating loss carryforwards (NOLs). We also find that large NOLs allow firms to persistently retain low ETRs year after year. In contrast, we find that multinationals and tax haven firms, which should have more opportunities for aggressive tax planning, have a lower probability of attaining a low ETR (relative to domestic and non-tax haven firms). Collectively, these findings suggest that the typical low ETR firm does not incur significant tax risk. Consistent with this, we find that low ETR firms accrue unrecognized tax benefits at a similar rate as firms that pay the statutory tax rate and do not experience higher future tax rate volatility. Overall, the results shed light on the profile of the average low ETR firm and provide evidence that the majority are utilizing large NOLs rather than aggressive tax planning.