Financial (Mis)conduct and Employee Mistreatment: Evidence from Wage Theft

The RAST conference held at Stanford, December 10-11, 2020 has a special focus on the role of financial reporting and disclosure and its impact on CSR (corporate social responsibility) and ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) policies and actions.

Financial (Mis)conduct and Employee Mistreatment: Evidence from Wage Theft
Presented by Aneesh Raghunandan, London School of Economics with discussant Aiyesha Dey, Harvard University
How do firms' financial incentives correlate with the treatment of their employees? Professor Aneesh Raghunandan from the London School of Economics discusses the interplay between firms’ financial reporting incentives and the way they treat their employees through the lens of corporate wage theft. Wage theft is the single most common form of theft committed in the United States and harms firms’ most vulnerable employees. He shows that firms are more likely to engage in wage theft when they are under short-term pressures to meet or beat earnings expectations and when their executives bear lower personal liability for corporate wage theft. He also finds evidence of a substitute relation between wage theft and financial misconduct. His results highlight an economically meaningful consequence of firms’ financial reporting incentives on the way in which they treat nonfinancial stakeholders.


The full program and additional information is available here: https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/events/r...

Watch Welcome and Introduction:    • Review of Accounting Studies Conferen...  
Watch Session 2 on Doing Good When Doing Well: Evidence on Real Earnings Management:    • Doing Good When Doing Well: Evidence ...  
Watch Session 3 on Strategic Reporting by Nonprofit Hospitals: An Examination of Bad Debt and Charity Care:    • Strategic Reporting by Nonprofit Hosp...  
Watch Session 4 on Voluntary Disclosure When Private Information and Proprietary Costs Are Jointly Determined:    • Voluntary Disclosure When Private Inf...  
Watch Session 5 on Criminals, Bankruptcy, and Cost of Debt:    • Criminals, Bankruptcy, and Cost of Debt  
Watch Session 6 on Monitoring or Payroll Maximization? What Happens When Workers Enter the Boardroom?:    • Monitoring or Payroll Maximization? W...  
Watch Session 7 on A New Take on Voice: The Influence of BlackRock’s “Dear CEO” Letters:    • A New Take on Voice: The Influence of...  
Watch Session 8 on The Impact of Carbon Disclosure Mandates on Emissions and Financial Operating Performance:    • The Impact of Carbon Disclosure Manda...  
Watch Current Statistics on RAST and Closing Remarks:    • Current Statistics on RAST and Closin...