Working Papers
with Vincent Giese | September 2024
We explore whether the actions of one regulator can affect the efficacy of another regulator. We investigate this idea in the context of environmental enforcement, which is a primary mechanism to combat industrial pollution and climate change. Specifically, we examine whether bank regulatory oversight affects the ability of environmental enforcement to reduce industrial emissions. We predict that bank regulatory oversight can constrain the availability of bank loans, hindering firms’ ability to obtain financing for greener technologies and thus mitigating the efficacy of environmental enforcement. Consistent with this idea, we find that the reduction in air pollution in response to county-level environmental enforcement is attenuated in counties exposed to increased bank regulatory oversight, as measured by the presence of severe enforcement actions. We also find that bank regulator leniency affects environment enforcement: environmental enforcement leads to greater (less) emission reduction in counties with exposure to more (less) lenient bank regulators. Further tests suggest that the impact of bank regulatory oversight on bank lending is the likely mechanism behind our primary findings: while we document an on-average increase in small business lending to counties subject to heightened environmental enforcement, consistent with local firms seeking capital to fund investments in emissions-reducing technologies, this increase is muted for counties exposed to enforcement actions. Collectively, our findings suggest that bank regulation affects the extent to which environmental enforcement reduces emissions, and they speak to the potential for the mission of one regulator to impact the objectives of another regulator.
Are Superstar Firms Tax Advantaged?
with Ed Maydew and Will Yoder | August 2024
Influential research finds that economic activity is increasingly concentrated in large, highly profitable “superstar firms”, potentially leading to adverse outcomes such as decreased competition and entrenchment. We examine whether superstar firms are tax advantaged compared to other firms, and if so, whether tax advantages contribute to the rise and persistence of superstar firms. While we find some evidence of a tax advantage in the form of lower tax burdens for superstar firms using traditional cash effective tax rates, this advantage disappears once we apply a correction to account for mismeasurement of intangible capital. Thus, superstar firms do not appear to have an advantage in terms of lower average tax burdens. However, we find that superstar firms have a tax advantage in that they allocate more tax-related cash savings to activities that are risky but likely have higher expected returns. Moreover, we find that the mapping of current tax burden into future superstar status is stronger for current superstar firms than other firms. That is, superstar firms appear to be better at deploying tax-related cash savings in ways that help to sustain their superstar status.
Spillovers from Regulatory Fragmentation: Evidence from Corporate Tax Burdens
with John Barrios and Yongzhao Lin | August 2024
Increased corporation regulation in recent decades has raised the likelihood of regulatory oversight spillovers—the extent to which one agency’s interactions with a regulated firm affects firm behaviors under the purview of another agency. We study how such spillovers can affect the mission of a specific regulator—the tax authority—using a measure of firm-specific exposure to fragmented regulation. Using a sample of publicly-traded U.S. firms, we document that regulatory fragmentation is associated with higher effective tax rates, indicating that non-IRS oversight constrains tax planning, which is the purview of the tax authority. This relation is increasing in the overall amount of regulation the firm faces and in the relative absence of alternative (e.g., capital market) monitors. Additionally, we observe that regulatory fragmentation is associated with lower IRS scrutiny and less variation in tax burdens within industries, suggesting that fragmented oversight impacts IRS monitoring efforts as well as industry competitive dynamics.
The Sound of Uncertainty: Examining Managerial Acoustic Uncertainty in Conference Calls
with Daniela de la Parra | July 2024
Building on the literature in linguistics showing that the manner in which individuals speak provides context incremental to the actual spoken words, we study whether uncertainty expressed via the acoustic features of managerial speech in conference calls impacts analyst behavior. Using a novel measure of managerial acoustic uncertainty, we find that when managers sound more uncertain in their responses to analyst questions, analyst forecast dispersion increases, even after accounting for characteristics of the actual language being used by managers and analysts. This finding is consistent with analysts relying less on information conveyed via acoustically uncertain responses, and thus more on information idiosyncratic to the analyst. Furthermore, we find that the association between acoustic uncertainty and analyst forecast dispersion varies predictably with the characteristics of these manager-analyst interactions, such as the specificity and forward-looking nature of the manager's response. Finally, we find that managerial acoustic uncertainty is positively associated with bid-ask spreads, and that this is concentrated within firms with greater increases in post-conference call forecast dispersion. Our findings suggest that uncertainty expressed in the acoustic features of managerial speech can affect market participants. Furthermore, our study creates and validates an approach to measuring managerial acoustic uncertainty.
Tax-induced Organizational Complexity and Executive Performance Measurement
with Eva Labro and Ginger Scanlon | June 2024
We investigate the relationship between tax-induced organizational complexity (TIOC) and executive performance measurement. We define TIOC as organizational complexity that would not exist in a world without differing tax policies across jurisdictions. While these structures can reduce tax burdens, firms must design their performance measurement systems to ensure executives effectively manage this complexity. Measuring TIOC using firms’ subsidiaries in tax havens and other low-tax countries, and controlling for non-tax sources of organizational complexity, we find first that TIOC is associated with longer-term performance measurement, consistent with executives needing to manage both the often-immediate tax benefits and often-delayed costs associated with TIOC. Second, TIOC is associated with a higher use of adjusted performance metrics, suggesting firms correct standard metrics for TIOC-induced measurement error and bias. Finally, TIOC is associated with more unique metrics and lower similarity in metrics across the executive team, consistent with effective management of TIOC requiring diverse activities.
Corporate Tax System Complexity and Investment
with Harald Amberger and Jaron Wilde | February 2024
Effective policymakers must balance the demands of formulating a corporate tax system that spurs economic activity (e.g., investment) while promoting a “level playing field” across firms. Balancing these tradeoffs has likely caused tax systems to become more complex over time, increasing firms’ difficulty in understanding and complying with tax regulations. We investigate the impact of tax system complexity on the responsiveness of firm-level investment to tax policy changes. Examining firm-level capital and labor investment and exploiting staggered tax rate changes across countries, we document two key findings. First, firm-level investment is less sensitive to changes in the corporate income tax rate when tax system complexity is higher, suggesting that such complexity can undermine the ability of tax policy to affect economic growth. Second, the impact of complexity on the sensitivity of investment to the tax rate varies significantly across firms, with domestic-owned, smaller, and private firms being more affected by tax system complexity. The cross-sectional disparity in the effect suggests such complexity could reduce tax system parity. Our findings collectively suggest that corporate tax system complexity can negatively impact the ability of fiscal policy to affect investment and leads to heterogeneous tax policy responses across firms.
Corporate Tax Planning and Industry Concentration
with Jesse van der Geest, Martin Jacob, and Christian Peters | March 2023
Recent research has documented that industry concentration has increased significantly over the past 25 years, with potentially negative consequences for competition, productivity, and social welfare. Some have suggested that greater corporate tax planning by industry leaders, which can provide them with a cost advantage over their competitors, has contributed to this trend. As a result, policymakers are targeting such tax planning to reduce industry concentration. We provide large-sample empirical evidence on whether tax planning is associated with industry concentration. In contrast with conventional wisdom, we find that industry leaders generally do not exhibit greater tax planning relative to their closest competitors. Furthermore, industry leader tax planning advantages do not meaningfully explain the trend in industry concentration over our sample period. Finally, we document that industries with plausibly tax planning-induced concentration do not exhibit different aggregate productivity growth than other industries. In short, our findings cast doubt on the idea that corporate tax planning is responsible for increasing industry concentration or other anti-competition industry-level outcomes in recent years.
Other Papers
with Stephan Hollander and Martin Jacob | June 2020
We use U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings to provide initial large-sample evidence regarding utilization of corporate tax provisions by U.S. firms under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES). These tax provisions were intended to provide firms immediate liquidity to prevent widespread bankruptcies and layoffs in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, critics have argued that the provisions were poorly targeted and amounted to “giveaways” for shareholders of large corporations. We find that 38 percent of firms discuss at least one of the CARES tax provisions in their SEC filings, a result primarily attributable to the net operating loss (NOL) carryback provision. Firms experiencing lower stock returns during the COVID-19 outbreak are more likely to discuss CARES tax provisions, but not firms in states or industry sectors exhibiting large increases in unemployment. Further, we find a higher likelihood of tax provision discussions for firms with pre-pandemic losses and higher financial leverage. Finally, we document some evidence that firms facing potential reputational or political costs from discussing these tax provisions may have avoided doing so. Our analyses suggest that tax provisions under CARES were not material for most publicly-traded U.S. firms, were not likelier to benefit firms in greater need of liquidity during the pandemic, and that some firms perceived that disclosing benefits would be costly. These findings are important for policymakers as they consider additional economic relief for U.S. corporations while the coronavirus pandemic lingers.
Featured in: Washington Post, Bloomberg Tax, Becker-Friedman Institute, BFI COVID Series