Opaque Financial Reporting due to Unemployment Concerns

• Main Authors: NG, Jeffrey, RANASINGHE, Tharindra, SHI, Guifeng, YANG, Holly I.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2015
• Subjects: Opacity; Transparency; Financial Reporting; Unemployment insurance; Accounting; Corporate Finance
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soa_research/1431; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soa_research/article/2430/viewcontent/OpaqueFinReportUnemploymentConcerns_2015.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

This paper examines the link between rank-and-file employees’ unemployment concerns and financial reporting opacity. Following Agrawal and Matsa (JFE, 2013), we use exogenous variations in state unemployment insurance benefits to capture changes to unemployment concerns. We find that when unemployme...