TY - JOUR
T1 - Unionization, product market competition, and strategic disclosure
AU - Aobdia, Daniel
AU - Cheng, Lin
N1 - Funding Information:
We are indebted to an anonymous referee and Wayne Guay (the editor) for their very helpful comments and suggestions. We also thank Matthew Cedergren, Mei Cheng, Gus DeFranco, Dan Dhaliwal, Ronald Dye, Alex Edwards, Robert Magee, David Matsa, Partha Mohanram, Reining Petacchi, Gordon Richardson, Nemit Shroff, Susan Shu, Mark Trombley, Andrew Van Buskirk, Dushyant Vyas, Beverly Walther, Franco Wong, Ping Zhang, and seminar participants at the University of Arizona, the University of Toronto, and the 2014 American Accounting Association annual meeting for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. We thank Charles Lee, Paul Ma, and Charles Wang for sharing their data on search-based peers. Daniel Aobdia gratefully acknowledges funding from the Accounting Research Center at Northwestern University and, in particular, the Ernst & Young LIVE and Revsine Fellowships. He co-wrote this paper before joining the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), where he was a Senior Economic Research Fellow between September 2014 and September 2016. The views expressed in this paper are his personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Board, individual Board members, or staff of the PCAOB.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2018/4/1
Y1 - 2018/4/1
N2 - We examine the disclosure policies of non-unionized firms operating in unionized industries. We test the hypothesis that non-unionized firms have an incentive to disclose more information when their unionized rivals are engaged in labor renegotiations; that is, to weaken them. We find that non-unionized firms disclose more information and more good news when renegotiations are ongoing. This behavior is stronger for larger firms, firms with fewer peers in the industry, and firms more similar to their renegotiating rivals. We also find some evidence that unionized firms are harmed by this behavior and that non-unionized firms benefit from their increased disclosures.
AB - We examine the disclosure policies of non-unionized firms operating in unionized industries. We test the hypothesis that non-unionized firms have an incentive to disclose more information when their unionized rivals are engaged in labor renegotiations; that is, to weaken them. We find that non-unionized firms disclose more information and more good news when renegotiations are ongoing. This behavior is stronger for larger firms, firms with fewer peers in the industry, and firms more similar to their renegotiating rivals. We also find some evidence that unionized firms are harmed by this behavior and that non-unionized firms benefit from their increased disclosures.
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U2 - 10.1016/j.jacceco.2018.01.002
DO - 10.1016/j.jacceco.2018.01.002
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85042158139
VL - 65
SP - 331
EP - 357
JO - Journal of Accounting and Economics
JF - Journal of Accounting and Economics
SN - 0165-4101
IS - 2-3
ER -