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Access status: Open Access ,
Beyond Political Markets: Corporate Political Activity, Policy Maker Motivations, and Societal Outcomes
(2025-07-23) Tabasi Nejad, Pouyan; Deutsch, Yuval
Government influence over firm outcomes can be determinative. Firms’ attempts to gain influence over this process through corporate political activity (CPA) is attracting growing interest from management scholars. Management research on this topic has conceived of CPA as a political market wherein firms offer resources to policy makers in exchange for advantageous policies. However, this conception of CPA has proved to suffer from key theoretical and empirical shortcomings. The political markets view represents an undertheorized framework which neglects the motivations of policy makers, and empirical findings do not support its predictions. Furthermore, while the literature has focused on firm-level outcomes, the societal effects and legitimacy of CPA remains an open question. This dissertation consists of three essays which seek to address these shortcomings of the CPA literature. The first essay is a conceptual study offering a new framework for CPA success that centres the role of policy maker motivations. Here, I draw on social influence theory to develop a model of CPA that integrates a fuller spectrum of policy maker motivations, how firms appeal to them, and how these appeals differ based on whether the policy maker is a politician or a bureaucrat. The second essay is an empirical study that seeks to extend CPA theory by examining the role of policymaker morality in determining the influence of political donations. Using within-firm fixed effects analysis, I demonstrate that when firms donate to politicians who are higher on the moral foundations of authority/subversion and loyalty/betrayal, they gain better policy outcomes, and that this effect is stronger during crisis. The third essay seeks to expand the research on CPA by looking at CPA's influence on societal rather than firm outcomes. Using Ordinary Least Squares multiple regression, the results indicate that states with greater marginalized populations had worse COVID-19 outcomes in states where political donations are legal. Together, these essays offer a view of CPA that is more complete as both a firm strategy and as a societal phenomenon.
Access status: Open Access ,
Optimizing the Outcomes of Ride-Hailing Platforms: Unresolved Challenges and New Insights
(2025-07-23) Bagherirad, Sonia; Levesque, Moren; Johnston, David Alan
This dissertation focuses on ride-hailing platforms such as Didi, Grab, Lyft, and Uber, innovative on-demand online services that quickly match riders with drivers. Specifically, it investigates how platforms optimize their outcomes under varying internal policies and environmental factors while considering stakeholder behavior. The research is divided into two studies. Chapter 2 reviews 89 publications published in operations and supply chain management journals about challenges that ride-hailing platforms face in day-to-day operations. An organizational framework is presented to synthesize the central research questions addressed in the existing literature, with these central research questions generally focusing on the impact that interactions among stakeholders and environmental factors have on ride-hailing platform outcomes, rider experience, and driver welfare. The organizational framework classifies the 89 publications into five main themes and identifies future research directions. One important research direction is the need for more research into mechanisms (e.g., information sharing) that encourage desired driver behavior, particularly their relocation decisions across zones to balance supply and demand. Chapter 3 investigates how sharing information about the proportions of ride requests, drivers, and average ride distances between zones affects (i) regret-averse drivers’ decisions to relocate and (ii) matching efficiency and the platform’s profitability. Of particular interest is whether information sharing can substitute for monetary compensation, the extent of this effect, and the conditions under which different information is most effective. Using a two-period Stackelberg game, we compare various information-sharing strategies against a baseline model that only shares surge multipliers, with the objective of either maximizing the platform’s profit or supply-demand matching efficiency. Our findings affirm that surge pricing is beneficial when there is an imbalance between supply (i.e., idle drivers) and demand (i.e., ride requests). Importantly, information can generally serve as a substitute for financial incentives, with its effectiveness depending on the degree of imbalance between idle drivers and ride requests and shared information. Higher relocation costs, moreover, can further amplify the benefit of sharing more information.
Access status: Open Access ,
Reliability And Non-GAAP Adjustment Explanations
(2025-04-10) Hassan, Sameera Khatoon; Thorne, Linda
Non-GAAP Financial Measures (NGFMs) have been in the academic spotlight for the last three decades, with a particular concern around the reliability of these measures. To address this reliability concern, regulators (including the Canadian Securities Administrators, CSA, and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC) have recently started requiring firms to provide a written explanation of their NGFM adjustments. However, to date, our understanding of how these explanations of NGFM adjustments influence investors is limited. This dissertation employs two methods to delve into the question of how explanations of NGFM adjustments influence investors' perceptions of reliability. First, I interview financial analysts, who reported that NGFMs are used to augment GAAP measures and stated their beliefs that NGFMs are important when evaluating the core operations of firms; however, they also spoke about a lack of consistency and transparency in NGFM adjustments which, in turn, serves to undermine their reliability. Second, I use an experiment to show that when firms provide an explanation for their NGFM adjustments, regardless of whether they are mandated by regulators or voluntarily provided, investors’ perception of their reliability increases. My findings also show that investors’ perception of the reliability of NGFM adjustments does not differ between positive versus negative adjustments. To conclude I find that explanations increase investors’ perceptions of the reliability of NGFM adjustments and financial information provided by public companies. My findings contribute important depth and understanding about investors’ perceptions of the reliability of NGFM adjustments. These findings have implications for accounting and finance academics, professionals, and standard-setters alike.
Access status: Open Access ,
Employees' Reactions To Coworker's Pro-Environmental Behaviour: Insights From Social Cognitive Theory And Social Comparison Theory
(2025-04-10) He, Long; Shao. Ruodan
Environmental issues are severe worldwide concerns that threaten ecosystems and humanity. The increased demand for pro-environmental behavior (PEB) has drawn attention to the environmental impact of organizations (Ones & Dilchert, 2012a). Employee PEB is essential for improving organizational environmental performance and sustainability (Boiral, 2009). Despite frequent peer interactions at work, little research has examined whether coworkers’ PEB positively influences focal employees’ PEB. Integrating social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986) with social comparison theory (Festinger, 1954), this dissertation examines the focal employee’s differential responses toward various types of coworkers’ PEB. Using Boiral and Paillé’s (2012) widely recognized categorization, I propose that a coworker’s eco-civic engagement, eco-initiatives, and eco-helping can have both positive and negative impacts on the focal employee. Specifically, I document three psychological mechanisms—integrity-based trust toward the coworker, the focal employee’s green self-efficacy, and the focal employee’s moral inferiority—that mediate the effects of a coworker’s PEB on the focal employee’s subsequent behaviors, including PEB at work and in life, collaboration with the coworker, and ostracism toward the coworker. Task interdependence and performance inferiority are proposed to moderate these mediated relationships. Four scenario-based experiments (Studies 1a–d) and a survey with dyadic data (Study 2) were used to test hypotheses. Studies 1a–d found that coworkers’ eco-civic engagement and eco-initiatives increased focal employees’ integrity-based trust toward coworkers, especially under higher task interdependence. Coworkers’ eco-initiatives and eco-helping positively impacted focal employees’ green self-efficacy, with the relationship between eco-helping and green self-efficacy being more pronounced under higher (vs. lower) task interdependence. Additionally, coworkers’ eco-helping increased focal employees’ moral inferiority, which was strengthened by performance inferiority. Study 2 replicated most findings from Studies 1a–d except for the relationship between coworkers’ eco-initiatives and focal employees’ green self-efficacy. Study 2 further found that coworkers’ eco-civic engagement and eco-initiatives increased collaboration via focal employees’ integrity-based trust and was amplified by task interdependence. Coworkers’ eco-helping increased focal employees’ personal PEB via focal employees’ green self-efficacy, which was strengthened by task interdependence. Eco-helping increased focal employees’ ostracism toward coworkers through focal employees’ moral inferiority, with performance inferiority exacerbating this relationship. Implications and future directions were also discussed.
Access status: Open Access ,
Platform Governance: A Study of Governance Mechanisms and Their Impact on Ecosystem Outcomes
(2024-11-07) Mahmood, Nudrat; Madhok, Anoop
While governance has long been fundamental to strategic management research, its nature has shifted in today’s digital economy. In this dissertation I study governance in the context of digital platforms, drawing together both theory and practice in three distinct and interrelated essays. In essay 1, I conduct a systematic literature review of platform governance to synthesize extant scholarship. In doing so, I uncover the conceptual structure of the literature, clarify the conceptual contours of the construct, develop an organizing framework, and identify areas for future research. In the next two essays, I conduct empirical investigations using the e-commerce landscape to address some of the salient gaps identified in the review. Specifically, in essay 2, I examine the effectiveness of revenue-sharing, a prominent pecuniary mechanism used by platform firms to govern ecosystem activity. In essay 3, I develop a better understanding of how governance mechanisms combine to shape platform participation. Specifically, I undertake a configurational examination of both user- and complementor- oriented governance mechanisms and study their impact on platform adoption. Together, the essays offer insight into how platform firms manage their ecosystems and as such advance a more nuanced understanding of platform governance, the development of which is increasingly important as digital platforms continue to integrate further into the economic fabric.
Access status: Open Access ,
Investing in a Digital Asset Environment: The Effects of Staff Accounting Bulletin 121 and the Fear of Missing Out
(2024-11-07) Epelbaum, Nicolas Ezequiel; Thorne, Linda
In recent years, regulators have become concerned that investors will be misled in the largely unregulated crypto-asset environment. Particularly, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has become concerned about the effects that the Fear of Missing Out (FoMO) could have on investors in the crypto-asset space (SEC, 2021a). This dissertation investigates, in an experimental setting, whether Staff Accounting Bulletin 121 (SAB 121) - recently issued financial reporting guidance by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) - protects investors with higher levels of FoMO in the crypto-asset environment. Two experiments were carried out online through Prolific using a sample of 95 retail investors (Experiment 1) and 412 retail investors (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, consistent with social psychology theory, I find that investors with higher levels of FoMO experience more negative emotions at the thought of missing out on future financial gains as they exhibit a higher propensity to invest in the crypto-asset market as compared to investors with lower levels of FoMO. I also find that exposure to SAB 121 decreases investors propensity to invest in the digital asset market with the effects being more pronounced for investors with higher levels of FoMO as compared to investors with lower levels of FoMO. Experiment 2 shows that SAB 121 decreases investors propensity to invest in the crypto-asset market by heightening their risk perception. I conclude the dissertation with a discussion of the implications of the findings for regulators, investors, and for accounting research.
Access status: Open Access ,
A Dyadic Understanding of Trust in Negotiations: The Role of Congruent and Asymmetric Trust States
(2024-07-18) Ji, Mingshuang; Tasa, Kevin
This dissertation examines the role of trust congruence and asymmetry in negotiation using a dyadic perspective. Based on theories of trust congruence and social balance, I hypothesize that negotiation dyads are more likely to achieve favorable subjective outcomes when their trust levels are aligned rather than divergent, and this relationship will be mediated by integrative and distributive behaviors. Two studies were conducted to test the research model, and polynomial regression with surface analysis was used for data analyses. In Study 1, data was collected from 120 MBA students (60 dyads) using a conflict resolution exercise. Findings of this study provide preliminary evidence for the role of different dyadic trust states on negotiation, suggesting a positive effect of trust congruence and a negative impact of trust incongruence on subjective negotiation outcomes. With an enhanced research design, Study 2 manipulated different states of dyadic trust among 242 undergraduate students (121 dyads) using a negotiation exercise in which negotiators must overcome an apparent negative bargaining zone by sharing information. Results of Study 2 re-confirm the positive impact of trust congruence and the negative impact of trust asymmetry on negotiation outcomes, and these impacts are partially mediated by integrative behaviors. In general, findings of this dissertation enhance our understanding of the role of trust in negotiation, by suggesting that it is more about the dyadic ‘balance’ between two negotiators within the dyad, besides the absolute level of individual trust, which makes trust favorable in negotiation contexts. This dissertation fills a critical gap in the literature by empirically assessing the role of different dyadic states of trust in negotiation and validating the theory of trust congruence. Practically, findings of this dissertation inform negotiators of the temporal and interactive nature of trust and highlight the importance of adaptivity and alignment during negotiations.
Access status: Open Access ,
Distinct outside forces influencing firm outcomes: Social media and city crime
(2024-07-18) Ahmed, Tahmina; Saxton, Gregory
Business entities face a multitude of external influences such as social, economic, and environmental factors. These outside forces have the capacity to instigate meaningful financial outcomes, emphasizing their importance for both the firms themselves and external stakeholders, namely, investors and regulatory authorities. In my dissertation, I explore two such outside yet discrete forces – social media engagement and city crime. Building on the concept of “online firestorms” that tweets can entice, I investigate a set of tweets sent by the S&P500 firms and their CEOs that the Twitterverse considers controversial. Consistent with social media’s cancel culture, I find evidence that the perceived controversial CEO tweets are associated with significant negative stock market reactions. The detrimental impact of CEOs’ controversial tweets is intensified for firms with “Star CEOs” and reversed for firms with high individual ownership. Using the same concept of “controversy” in firm tweets, I find contrasting outcomes that imply a positive significant reaction of controversial tweets on the stock market. This evidence complements inferences from previous studies that documented price-distortion behavior of social media messages firms post. Sentiment analyses of these firm-tweets reveal when the tweet contents are positively oriented, the market reacts more optimistically no matter the perceived controversy in the tweets. My dissertation expands the influence of outside forces by investigating crime rate in the city in which firms are headquartered. Using the Accounting and Auditing Enforcement Releases issued by the SEC to firms for fraudulent financial reporting and the city crime rates in the USA, I show evidence that indicates the higher the crime rate in the city in which firms are headquartered, the higher the likelihood of fraudulent reporting. Further, with subsample analysis, I demonstrate a nuanced influence of CEO compensation and of proximity to the SEC’s headquarter, on the relationship between crime and fraudulent financial reporting.
Access status: Open Access ,
Essays on Corporate Finance
(2024-03-16) Hosein Hamisheh Bahar; Ng, Lilian; Foroughi, Pouyan
In the first chapter, I study how corporations leverage voluntary disclosure to illuminate the murk arising from business complexity. I find that conglomerates compensate for their business complexity by strategically disclosing more information voluntarily. This finding becomes more pronounced under heightened information demands from stakeholders and analysts or when the pay-performance sensitivity is higher. The enhanced transparency serves as a strategic move, yielding tangible benefits in the form of improved firm valuation and decreased capital costs. Overall, my study illustrates that multi-segment firms tactically deploy voluntary disclosure to offset the potential detriments of their business complexity. In the second chapter, I study the efficacy of environmental enforcement in powering down pollution and investigate how management in the US electricity sector navigates such enforcement. Analyzing data from power plants, I find that facilities targeted by the EPA tend to reduce pollution emissions and electricity production. Managerial responses to these challenges involve strategies, including installing scrubbers, enhancing pollution abatement efforts, investing in energy-efficient generators, and reducing coal-fired electricity production. These changes are facilitated by the organizational structure of utility firms and the economies of scale in fuel acquisition, the availability of financial resources, environmental agencies undertaking enforcement, and utility firms' regulatory status. While heightened regulatory compliance costs do not significantly impact the financial performance of firms, they ultimately result in higher electricity prices for consumers, reflecting a transfer of the financial burden. In the third chapter, I aim to unveil the role of lobbying activities in creating a nexus between corporations and their institutional shareholders and trace the footprints of lobbyists in mutual funds voting. This chapter investigates whether mutual funds exhibit a preference for portfolio companies with which they have shared lobbyists and assesses how this preference impacts their voting behavior. I uncover that connected institutional shareholders exhibit a higher propensity to vote in concurrence with company management—especially when such votes carry significant managerial value. Following these voting events, I observe that higher connected mutual fund support is negatively associated with abnormal return. Overall, my findings indicate that management might strategically leverage shared lobbying relationships to influence shareholder voting patterns.
Access status: Open Access ,
Essays in Corporate Finance and Corporate Innovation
(2023-12-08) Khan, Aman; Tian, Yisong
In the first chapter I investigate whether firms grant stock options to rank-and-file employees (RFOs) for retention purposes. I find that it depends on their level of investment in intellectual property. Firms grant more RFOs if they have more knowledge capital, more patents awarded, more citations received by these patents, and more patents for “breakthrough” innovations. After the risk of poaching by rival firms is diminished by the adoption of the Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine, I find that firms with above median level of knowledge capital reduce their RFO grants by 32% relative to control firms; the reduction is minimal for firms with below median level of knowledge capital. In the second chapter I investigate how effective are RFO grants in retaining employees. Previous studies find that while there is an initial reduction in employee turnover, the effect is temporary and quickly reversed within three years of the grant. In this chapter, I show that the impact of RFOs is permanent. I find that there is a 36% reduction in inventor turnover in the year of grant and the impact remains over the next three years. Importantly, there is no reversal suggesting that the benefit is permanent instead of transitory. I also find that the importance of RFOs to reduce inventor turnover increases following the implementation of FAS123R when firms reduce the use of RFO. In the final chapter I study the behavior of firms with respect to their patent applications. I find that firms engage in window dressing by timing the date of their patent applications. I find that almost 40% of firms’ yearly patents are filed in the last quarter of the calendar year accompanied by a reduction in the quality of these patents. The behavior is more prevalent among firms subject to lower external and internal monitoring, supporting the incentive to window dress as the underlying channel. To establish window dressing as the key mechanism, I use the adoption of America Invents Act as a quasi-natural experiment that has increased the costs of window dressing. Following the adoption of the Act, the window dressing behavior become less prevalent.
Access status: Open Access ,
Topics in Empirical Corporate Finance
(2023-12-08) Naderi Khorshidi, Hossein; Bae, Kee-Hong; Kecskes, Ambrus
In the first chapter of my dissertation, I study firm innovation as a transmission channel for monetary policy. Analyzing the impact of unanticipated changes to monetary policy on the cross-section of U.S. equity returns, I show that the sensitivity of firms’ equity prices to changes in monetary policy may depend on firms’ innovation characteristics. I find that the more the firm employs an exploratory search in its innovation strategy, the higher the sensitivity of its stock price to monetary policy. Further, I present evidence suggesting that variables capturing exploratory and exploitative innovation characteristics of firms may explain the relative sensitivity of firms’ future earnings, capital expenditures, and R&D spending to monetary shocks. In the second chapter of my dissertation, I define a novel measure to capture the timing of the future cash flow generated by the firm’s investment in innovation. I call this measure “the duration of firm innovation”. I show evidence suggesting that my measure of the duration of firm innovation is a significant channel for the transmission of monetary policy to equity prices. In the third chapter, I study the effect of work-from-home on employee performance and teamwork in the context of the sell-side analyst industry. Using a difference-in-difference setting utilizing the exogenous adoption of work-from-home following the start of the Coronavirus pandemic, I find that the performances of analysts working both individually and in teams are negatively affected following the adoption of work-from-home. Moreover, I find that following the adoption of pandemic-induced work-from-home, team size becomes negatively related to team performance, supporting the higher coordination costs hypothesis in work-from-home settings. I also find a negative impact of working from home on teams led by female analysts. These findings are in line with the findings of the prior literature which document an unequal impact of work-from-home on female employees due to the unequal burden of household responsibilities.
Access status: Open Access ,
Impacts of Post-Truth Conditions on a Susceptible Market: The Case of Nicotine Vaping
(2023-12-08) El-Bialy, Rowan; Fischer, Eileen; Veresiu, Ela
The post-truth era is characterized by widespread mistrust, competing truth claims, and polarization that impact some markets to a greater degree than others. This study introduces the concept of post-truth markets as those which are highly susceptible to being impacted by post-truth conditions. Three research questions guide this study: Why are some markets susceptible to the impacts of post-truth conditions? What is the impact of post-truth conditions on susceptible markets? And, how do consumers navigate post-truth markets? Taking the nicotine vaping market as an exemplar of post-truth markets, this study uses critical discourse analysis to examine qualitative data, including archival data (legal, news media, industry, and advocacy texts), in-depth interviews with consumers and advocates, and observational data. The theoretical insights generated indicate that markets affected by historical stigma, restrictive authority interventions, and changing expert opinions are susceptible to becoming post-truth markets. Further, the data analysis suggests that post-truth conditions lead to contestation in such markets, including moral contestation which has been noted in prior literature, and epistemic contestation which this study introduces. Consumers develop various strategies based on a post-truth subjectivity to navigate post-truth markets, including alternate truth-seeking (through relational and embodied knowledge), entrepreneurship, and activism. This research introduces several new concepts to consumer research, including the concepts of post-truth markets, post-truth subjectivity, and epistemic contestation. The findings also contribute to the growing literatures on marketplace contestation, activism, stigma, and the role of emotions in consumption. Finally, the findings have implications for various stakeholders in the nicotine vaping market, as well as other post-truth markets.
Access status: Open Access ,
Accounting, Accountability, and Open Data
(2023-12-08) Walsh, Leigh Ellen; Saxton, Gregory
Widely accepted as central components of good governance, accountability and transparency underpin calls for ‘open’ approaches to organization, including ‘open data’ (OD). But rhetorical use of these catchwords tends to blur important distinctions – and tensions – between them. This dissertation examines the relationships between open data and accountability in democratic governance, specifically as mobilized within public financial management (PFM) systems. The chapters build on one another to answer two overarching questions. First, how does OD combine with and/or extend existing arrangements for public financial management? And second, (how) does OD deliver on its promise to increase accountability? A combination of qualitative research methods including literature review, theory development, and empirical analysis are employed. The theoretical development draws on accountability and transparency literature to propose a framework that situates OD as both an object and instrument of accountability. This framework provides a theoretical lens through which organizational practices can be studied from an accountability perspective and guides the empirical study of OD in local government presented in this dissertation. Empirical materials including documents, interviews, and observations were gathered following a case study method and analysed to offer two distinct yet complementary views of OD in PFM. First, by adopting a data ‘producer’ perspective and theorizing OD as an informing practice, the study finds that OD has been adopted as a new type of informing practice and constitutes an aspect of conduct for which organizational actors are accountable. Two transparency orientations – usability and understandability – are identified and used to explain tensions and/or barriers that arise in OD implementation. Second, data ‘user’ perspectives are considered by theorizing OD as an instrument of accountability used in debating processes. The findings suggest that while there is a clear alignment between ‘open’ and ‘dialogic’ principles, OD is at best considered a partial tool that, used dialogically and in combination with other information sources, may encourage dialogic forms of engagement and accountability. Drawing attention to the absence of accounting in the burgeoning field of ‘open’ practice and research, this dissertation encourages Further research at the intersection of accounting, accountability, and open data.
Access status: Open Access ,
Essays in Asset Pricing
(2023-12-08) Celik, Batur; Dong, Ming
This dissertation includes three essays in asset pricing. The first two essays explain the role of investor trust on mutual fund investor behavior and private fund capital raising, respectively. The third essay proposes a valuation model for bitcoin options. In the first essay, I investigate the impact of investment adviser disciplinary actions on mutual fund performance and investor redemption behavior. After a regulatory disciplinary action initiation, funds experience a transitory performance loss in the next month. In contrast, I observe persistent fund outflows starting two months after the regulatory action disclosure and persisting for over one year. My evidence suggests that investors reduce investments in affected funds mainly because they lose trust in fund integrity rather than because they observe fund performance deterioration. In the second essay, I examine the role of investor trust in the capital raising process of private funds by analyzing the impact of third-party service providers and investment adviser disciplinary actions in the US. Using private fund’s initial filings, I document that fund managers that use third party marketers raise less capital and have reduced shares of sophisticated investors even though these marketers can bring more investors. This finding indicates that investors do not trust third party marketers and prefer fund managers to be directly involved in the capital raising process. On the other hand, service providers such as auditors and bookkeepers that help regulate private funds’ financials and increase investor trust are associated with more capital raised and investor ownership. Furthermore, I observe persistent decline in total assets managed, number of investors and sophisticated investor ownership following a criminal action, suggesting that investors place a significant value on trust and more likely to respond specific disciplinary actions by withdrawing their assets. In the final essay, I propose an equilibrium valuation model for bitcoin options traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Numerical analysis shows that, among other things, all risks lead to a positive premium in option prices relative to the benchmark Black-Scholes model, and the diffusive and/or jump risks of money supply accounts for a large portion of the bitcoin return volatility.
Access status: Open Access ,
Three Essays on the Economic Impact of FinTech Lending
(2023-03) Jia, Xiaoran; Kanagaretnam, Kiridaran
This dissertation consists of three independent papers with a related theme focusing on the economic and capital market impacts of FinTech lending. In specific, this dissertation explores the influence of FinTech penetration on traditional banks’ risk-taking, the influence of non-traditional information on lending discrimination in P2P lending, and whether digital inclusion is a potential determinant of P2P penetration. In Chapter 1, based on a sample of U.S. community banks and FinTech loans data from LendingClub and Prosper, I find a positive association between banks' future change in risk-taking and their current exposure to FinTech penetration. Path analysis reveals that FinTech penetration influences bank risk-taking through the erosion of bank charter value. Cross-sectional analysis suggests that banks with the lowest ex-ante charter values increase risk-taking the most. Additionally, I document that the risk-increasing effect of FinTech penetration is less pronounced for banks with more conservative loan loss provisioning and less reliance on hard information. My findings suggest that regulators may need to pay more attention to smaller banks with lower or deteriorating charter values. Chapter 2 hypothesizes that racial discrimination can exist in P2P lending even when race-related information is not directly observable, and that the degree of racial discrimination decreases in the precision of credit quality signals generated from both traditional and non-traditional information. I document that loan listings in counties with a greater proportion of minority populations are associated with higher lending rates and higher loan denial rates. Cross-sectional tests indicate that racial discrimination is less pronounced when the availability of both traditional and non-traditional information is greater. Chapter 3 investigates the influence of digital inclusion on financial inclusion. I document that digital inclusion is positively associated with P2P lending penetration, with such relation more pronounced in county-years with more vulnerable/excluded populations. The results are robust to the use of instrumental variable (2SLS) approach, alternative measurements, weighted least squares regression, additional controls, and single-year analysis. In addition, I document that higher-risk borrowing is less likely to be denied in county-years with higher digital inclusion.
Access status: Open Access ,
Beyond Backlash: Reducing Resistance and Generating Support in Response to Diversity Initiatives Through Opening Identity Tactics
(2023-08-04) Bryan, Camellia Sison; Lyons, Brent
Although researchers are recognizing that dominant social identity threat towards diversity initiatives can result in backlash, researchers have paid limited attention to how dominant social identity threat can be in service of support for diversity. This dissertation considers how identity exploration after dominant social identity threat can facilitate responses that move members of dominant social identity groups towards diversity support rather than diversity resistance. First, I I bridge theory on identity threat and uncertainty regulation to birth a comprehensive model of how identity threat can lead employees belonging to dominant social identity groups to engage in closing and opening identity tactics. Closing identity tactics re-affirm one’s hierarchy-maintaining knowledge about membership to dominant social identity groups, while opening identity tactics transform one’s understanding of membership to dominant social identity groups, so that the focus becomes one that is less about maintaining hierarchy and more about challenging inequalities. Then, I document in Study 1 that participants show greater engagement in opening identity tactics after reading about an organization’s diversity initiatives when they complete an opening identity tactics intervention, which in turn, came to explain why participants were more likely to report valuing of diversity and organizational identification toward the organization. Finally, I further document in Study 2 that White employees of organizations with existing diversity initiatives showed a stronger relationship between their engagement in opening identity tactics and valuing of diversity after completing a six-week opening identity tactics intervention (versus a control condition). Overall, my dissertation challenges a widely held assumption that dominant social identity threat is only a roadblock to the advancement of diversity and inclusion in organizations. Rather, I show how dominant social identity threat can also trigger positive identity changes that translate into support for diversity. In doing so, my research has implications for understanding the benefits and costs of diversity initiatives and dominant social identity threat.
Access status: Open Access ,
Essays on Innovation
(2023-08-04) Mahalati Rayeni, Alireza; Larkin, Yelena
Innovation is the engine of economic growth for developed countries. In my dissertation, I study three different factors that affect firms’ innovation outcome. The first chapter of my dissertation shows that when courts systematically favor plaintiffs over defendants, their biased attitudes stifle innovation and reduce the financial value of innovative firms under their jurisdiction. The second chapter of my dissertation looks at another aspect of innovation output, namely the inventors. I show that inventors who work in cities with higher level of labor market concentration produce more patents while compensating that with lower quality of innovation. The third chapter of my paper shows that in firms where the extensive monitoring is absent; innovation output could also be the outcome of firms’ attempt to time the market.
Access status: Open Access ,
Citizen Use and Comprehension of Government Accounting Information: Applications of Design Science Research Methodology
(2023-08-04) Kurpierz, John Richard; Everett, Jeffery S.
This dissertation seeks to explore how accounting can alleviate, but also aggravate, the tensions of informed democratic participation. The behavior of accountants and the format of disclosures in governmental accounting have a powerful effect upon how citizens perceive and make decisions about their community. Because accounting research has only recently begun considering citizens as a central actor, there has been limited synthesis of this knowledge between researchers and practitioners. This dissertation seeks to bridge the gap between governmental accounting practitioners and researchers, and employs the theoretical lens of design science to do so. Design science, originally developed by accounting researchers, is used in other disciplines to bridge similar gaps. This dissertation provides three contributions to the existing literature. First, this dissertation contributes an epistemological innovation by using a design science perspective to examine this research topic and show how design science remains a valuable tool for accounting research. Second, this dissertation finds evidence supporting Baber & Gore’s (2008) supposition of governmental GAAP compliance in a novel context. Third, this dissertation uses design science methodology to become the first research that shows how practitioners developed and implemented Citizen-Centric Reporting (CCR) and how this has negatively impacted CCR effectiveness. These contributions begin in Chapter II with a genealogical literature review to show how the earliest uses of design science involved synthesizing the governmental accounting knowledge of both researchers and practitioners. In Chapter III, a design science paradigm synthesizes practitioner behavior around disclosures with correlational evidence from Washington State that school districts may be forced to choose between GAAP compliance and better performance on citizen-salient metrics, in keeping with Baber and Gore’s (2008) resource-constraint prediction. Finally, in Chapter IV, the design science DAGS Framework is used to analyze the CCR and its creators’ design goals. The CCR was deployed based on practitioner experience rather than an explicit design model, and there has been limited study of the CCR’s intent or effectiveness. Chapter IV involves interviewing the surviving creators of the CCR to determine the implicit design decisions, and judging whether the CCR fulfills its intended purpose under the constraints of those design decisions.
Access status: Open Access ,
The Influence of Affect Regulation on Professional Skepticism
(2023-03-28) Osecki, Errol David; Thorne, Linda
Variances in professional skepticism are a primary cause of audit deficiencies, and thus understanding how these variations happen is of keen interest to practitioners, standard-setter, and regulators so that they can better manage professional skepticism. To this end, academics have created successively more explanatory professional skepticism models. One factor known to cause variations in professional skepticism is affect, yet how it causes these variations is still not understood as the most current models cannot explain why negative affect has been found to both increase and decrease professional skepticism. The purpose of this dissertation is to build a more explanatory model of professional skepticism with respect to affect by asking and answering the question, how does affect produce variations in professional skepticism? To answer the question, I first conduct a review of professional skepticism literature and relevant affect literature to identify affect regulation as a notable theory currently excluded from professional skepticism models. Affect regulation predicts people anticipate affect as it is being generated and change their behaviour to either up- or down-regulate the affect in service of some goal. This is notable as it can explain the contradictory results with respect to negative affect and professional skepticism observed in the literature. I further investigate this with an interview study, the results of which further support the inclusion of affect regulation into a new model of professional skepticism. Then, these insights are combined to create a new model of professional skepticism. Finally, I calibrate the model with an online experiment, the results of which fail to find significant results. Taken together, the new model of professional skepticism developed herein better explains how variations in professional skepticism occur and is of use to those looking to better manage affect to optimize professional skepticism.
Access status: Open Access ,
I'll Believe It When I See It: Widespread Use of Organizational Diversity Statements Undermines Perceived Sincerity and Organizational Attraction
(2022-12-14) Varty,Christianne; Hideg, Ivona
As diversity has become highly valued, organizational diversity statements as a means to attract prospective applicants have become widespread and normative. Consequently, it is critical to understand in this context whether they are effective at enhancing applicant attraction. Drawing on and integrating a signalling perspective of organizational initiatives (Bowen & Ostroff, 2004; Leslie, 2019) with the literature on authenticity (Lehman et al., 2019), I theorize that awareness of the prevalence of organizational diversity statements undermines a prospective applicant’s attraction to the organization because of lower perceived sincerity of the organization’s commitments. In Study 1 using qualitative methods and a sample of organizational diversity statements (i.e., Fortune 100), I establish that statements are indeed highly prevalent and sophisticated. I follow up on this finding with an experiment in Study 2 testing the negative effects of awareness of this prevalence on applicant attraction via decreased perceived sincerity. Next, I identify and test potential factors to mitigate this negative effect on applicant attraction to the organization by intervening on the proposed mediator of perceived sincerity. In Study 3, I appeal to values and particularly diversity as a social responsibility (vs. the business case for diversity) which I expect to be perceived as more sincere and which should thus increase applicant attraction even for those made aware of the prevalence of statements. Finally, in Study 4, I examine whether providing evidence of an organization’s accountability for making progress (i.e., workforce demographic data) can boost perceived sincerity by helping applicants see the organization as living up to its claims. Theoretical and practical implications of this work will be discussed.

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