The DOI matches its Crossref record; 71 of the 74 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Corporate Scandals and Regulation
Abstract
Are regulatory interventions delayed reactions to market failures or can regulators proactively pre‐empt corporate misbehavior? From a public interest view, we would expect “effective” regulation to ex ante mitigate agency conflicts between corporate insiders and outsiders, and prevent corporate misbehavior from occurring or quickly rectify transgressions. However, regulators are also self‐interested and may be captured, uninformed, or ideological, and become less effective as a result. In this registered report, we develop a historical time series of corporate (accounting) scandals and (accounting) regulations for a panel of 26 countries from 1800 to 2015. An analysis of the lead‐lag relations at both the global and individual country level yields the following insights: (1) Corporate scandals are an antecedent to regulation over long stretches of time, suggesting that regulators are typically less flexible and informed than firms. (2) Regulation is positively related to the incidence of future scandals, suggesting that regulators are not fully effective, that explicit rules are required to identify scandalous corporate actions, or that new regulations have unintended consequences. (3) There exist systematic differences in these lead‐lag relations across countries and over time, suggesting that the effectiveness of regulation is shaped by fundamental country characteristics like market development and legal tradition.
Overview
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
In the citing paper
“Finally, financial reporting regulation often reacts to corporate scandals or financial crises, as they change what is deemed material information (Hail et al. 2018).”
From Mandatory CSR and sustainability reporting: economic analysis and literature review (2021) · cites this paper as Hail et al. 2018
Citations
Cites
Investigating causal relations by econometric models and cross-spectral methods
Granger, C. W. J. (1969) · Econometrica · doi:10.2307/1912791 · Cited by 22,989
La Porta, R., Lopez‐de‐Silanes, F., Shleifer, A., & Vishny, R. W. (1998) · Journal of Political Economy · doi:10.1086/250042 · Cited by 18,025
Legal Determinants of External Finance
LA PORTA, R., LOPEZ‐DE‐SILANES, F., SHLEIFER, A., & VISHNY, R. W. (1997) · The Journal of Finance · doi:10.1111/j.1540-6261.1997.tb02727.x · Cited by 9,783
The Theory of Economic Regulation
Stigler, G. J. (1971) · The Bell Journal of Economics and Management Science · doi:10.2307/3003160 · Cited by 8,098
The Political Economy of the Rent-Seeking Society
Krueger, A. O. (2008) · Springer eBooks · doi:10.1007/978-3-540-79247-5_8 · Cited by 5,273
Toward a More General Theory of Regulation
Peltzman, S. (1976) · The Journal of Law and Economics · doi:10.1086/466865 · Cited by 4,780
The great reversals: the politics of financial development in the twentieth century
Rajan, R. G., & Zingales, L. (2003) · Journal of Financial Economics · doi:10.1016/s0304-405x(03)00125-9 · Cited by 3,327
Congress: A Political-Economic History of Roll Call Voting
Poole, K. T., & Rosenthal, H. L. (2000) · Medical Entomology and Zoology · Cited by 2,798
What Works in Securities Laws?
PORTA, R. L., López‐de‐Silanes, F., & Shleifer, A. (2006) · The Journal of Finance · doi:10.1111/j.1540-6261.2006.00828.x · Cited by 2,690
The Unanticipated Consequences of Purposive Social Action
Merton, R. Κ. (1936) · American Sociological Review · doi:10.2307/2084615 · Cited by 2,518
Flagged first, then by citations
3 of the 74 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.
Research works printed but not linked: 6
- Engstrom D., 2013, Corralling Capture, Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, 36, 31
- Littleton A., 1933, Accounting Evolution to 1900
- McCraw T., 1984, Prophets of Regulation
- Pigou A., 1938, The Economics of Welfare
- Tamny J., 2015, Popular Economics
- Yandle B., 1983, Bootleggers and Baptists: The Education of a Regulatory Economist, Regulation, 7, 12
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Items 101–112 of 112
Hansen, B., Kim, J., & Lee, J. J. (2026) · Issues in Accounting Education · doi:10.2308/issues-2024-083
Irwandi, S. A., Samekto, A., & Shonhadji, N. (2026) · Banks and Bank Systems · doi:10.21511/bbs.21(1).2026.18
The Political Economy of Fintech: Review of Literature and Proposal of Research Agenda
Kuokštis, V. (2026) · Politologija · doi:10.15388/polit.2026.122.1
Lohar, B., & Panchal, M. (2026) · SSRN Electronic Journal · doi:10.2139/ssrn.6891018
Pay Transparency Laws and Employee-Related Corporate WrongdoingPreprint
Hoque, H., & Pour, E. K. (2026) · SSRN Electronic Journal · doi:10.2139/ssrn.6910463
Auditor independence and human capital: Complements, not substitutes
White, J. T. (2026) · Journal of Accounting and Economics · doi:10.1016/j.jacceco.2026.101917
Pay Transparency as Strategic Governance: Evidence from wage and hour violationsPreprint
Hoque, H., & Pour, E. K. (2026) · SSRN Electronic Journal · doi:10.2139/ssrn.7231445
Technology Alleviates Differences: Corporate Digital Transformation and ESG Rating DivergencePreprint
Ding, B., & Lu, P. (2026) · SSRN Electronic Journal · doi:10.2139/ssrn.7316949
Sabotaging trust: how deception, gaslighting and self-sabotaging behavior erode institutional trust
Mcilveene, T. R., Davis, M. M., Scott, J., & LeMay, S. A. (2026) · Society and Business Review · doi:10.1108/sbr-05-2025-0215
Preventing disorderly corporate collapse and stakeholder losses: are directors the answer?
Pope, P., & Young, S. (2026) · Accounting and Business Research · doi:10.1080/00014788.2026.2719178
Metadata
- Authors
- HAIL, L., TAHOUN, A., & WANG, C.
- Affiliations
- University of Pennsylvania (US)
- London Business School (GB)
- University of Iowa (US)
- Venue
- Journal of Accounting Research
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2018-03-30
- Volume
- 56
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 617-671
- ISSN
- 0021-8456 (ISSN-L)
- 1475-679X
- OpenAlex
- W2795323841
- Cited by
- 111
- References
- 74
- Citations by year
- 2026: 14 · 2025: 15 · 2024: 17 · 2023: 22 · 2022: 9 · 2021: 8 · 2020: 5 · 2019: 11 · 2018: 5
- FWCI
- 21.33
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Journal of Accounting Research (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Accounting › Auditing, Earnings Management, Governance
- Social Sciences › Public Administration › Regulation and Compliance Studies
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Finance › Corporate Finance and Governance
- Keywords
- corporate scandals, accounting regulation, regulatory effectiveness, principal-agent problem, regulatory capture, lead-lag relationship, market failure, regulatory delays, market development, legal tradition, cross-national comparison
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review