Research

Publications:

- Conferences: 2016 MIT Asia Conference, 2016 AAA FARS Midyear Meeting

- Abstract: We test two potential hypotheses regarding the effects of major customer concentration on firm profitability. Under the collaboration hypothesis, both the supplier firm and its major customers obtain benefits. Under the competition hypothesis, the major customers benefit at the expense of the supplier firm. We document that major customer concentration is negatively associated with the supplier firm’s profitability but positively associated with the major customers’ performance. We demonstrate that these effects weaken as the supplier’s power grows over its relationship with major customers, supporting the competition hypothesis. We carefully reconcile our results with prior findings that focus only on the supplier firm’s profitability by identifying their research design and interpretation problems. We obtain similar inferences when using alternative customer concentration measures as well as in a setting of major customers’ horizontal mergers. 


- Conferences:  2019 MIT Asia Conference in Accounting (Best Paper Award), 2019 AAA FARS Midyear Meeting, 2018 AAA Annual Meeting

- Abstract: Advertising is a critical competitive tool that shapes interactions among firms in the product market. Using third-party tracked data on advertising outlet costs, I find that a nontrivial portion of public firms, even those with intense advertising activities, do not disclose advertising expenses in their financial statements, indicating significant disclosure discretion. I further use product category-level advertising data to develop a firm-specific measure of advertising rivalry. I predict and find that advertising rivalry is negatively associated with the likelihood of disclosing advertising expenses. This negative association is more pronounced when firms advertise on less trackable media outlets or have more mature products. These findings suggest that firms consider their advertising expenses proprietary and that concerns about advertising competition discourage the disclosure of advertising expenses.


- Conferences:  2020 AAA Annual Meeting, 2021 Tel Aviv Accounting Conference, 2021 UCI/UCLA/USC/UCSD/UCR Joint Conference

- Abstract: Using novel data on corporate accounting employees, we find that the risk aversion of rank-and-file accounting employees, proxied by the proportion of female accountants, is negatively associated with the likelihood of internal control weaknesses. The results are incremental to controlling for other accounting employee characteristics, such as experience and quality, which are also associated with fewer internal control weaknesses. In contrast, female non-accounting employees explain operating risk and not internal control risk. We mitigate endogeneity concerns by using an entropy balanced sample and an instrumental variable approach that exploits variation in the external supply of female accountants. Our study is among the first to provide large-sample archival evidence that characteristics of accounting employees matter to financial reporting and how these effects differ from non-accounting employees.


- Conferences:  2022 AAA Western Region Meeting, 2022 AAA Annual Meeting

- Abstract: We examine managerial incentives to disclose the gender diversity of a firm’s workforce. We exploit information from employees’ online profiles to infer the gender diversity of nondisclosing firms. Within industry, we find that firms are more likely to disclose gender diversity when women comprise a higher proportion of their workforce, consistent with managerial incentives to disclose favorable information. However, disclosure is more prevalent in industries with a lower proportion of female employees, consistent with a poor gender diversity environment making a firm’s gender diversity appear relatively more favorable. Regarding the potential benefits of disclosure, disclosing firms enjoy more favorable media coverage of the firm’s diversity and attract a larger number of gender-lens ESG funds. Disclosing firms with a higher proportion of female employees enjoy greater benefits. Overall, our study broadens our understanding of the evolving corporate disclosure landscape by providing evidence on firms’ incentives to disclose workforce gender diversity.