EDGAR Implementation, Unionization, and Strategic Disclosure

We appreciate helpful comments from Elizabeth Blankespoor (editor), two anonymous reviewers, Janja Brendel, Ying Cao, Simon Fung, Zhaoyang Gu, Jeong-Bon Kim, Byung Hee Lee, Liuchuang Li, Hai Lu, Wei Luo, Zhiming Ma, Kevin Tseng, Ke Wang, Anne Wyatt, Donghui Wu, Yujun Wu, Xiangang Xin, Xiao Xiao, Bo Xu, George Yang, Yangxin Yu, Qi Zhang, Ruishen Zhang, Chunmei Zhu, Wei Zhu, and workshop participants at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Deakin University, Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen, Peking University, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, and Xi’an Jiaotong University. We thank Charlie Aleman and Dongling Xu for excellent research assistance collecting management forecast data. Daniel Aobdia acknowledges financial support from the Smeal College of Business at The Pennsylvania State University, particularly the PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP Research Fellowship and Ernst & Young Professorship. Xuan Wu acknowledges financial support from National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant Number 72202050], Shenzhen Key Research Base of Humanities and Social Sciences [Grant Number KP191002], and Shenzhen Peacock Talents Start-Up Fund. Lin Cheng and Qin Tan have no apparent or actual conflicts of interest related to this research.

Daniel Aobdia was a Senior Economic Research Fellow in the Center of Economic Analysis at the PCAOB between September 2014 and September 2016. He currently advises the PCAOB on questions related to the economics of auditing. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not reflect the views of the board, individual board members, or staff of the PCAOB.

All errors and omissions are ours.

Daniel Aobdia, The Pennsylvania State University, Smeal College of Business, Accounting Department, University Park, PA, USA; Lin Cheng, China Europe International Business School, Finance and Accounting Department, Shanghai, China; Qin Tan, City University of Hong Kong, College of Business, Department of Accountancy, Hong Kong, China; Xuan Wu, Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen, School of Economics and Management, Shenzhen, China.

Supplemental material is available online, as linked in the text.

Editor’s note: Accepted by Elizabeth Blankespoor, under the Senior Editorship of W. Robert Knechel.