{ "schemaVersion": "1.0", "releaseDate": "2026-08-21", "maturity": "public-beta", "audience": "Accounting PhD students and advanced master’s students", "provenance": "The reading map was assembled from a private instructor research library, then checked against publisher or author-controlled records. No private notebook link, licensed paper file, or unpublished project result is exposed here.", "redistributionPolicy": "Publisher and author records are linked. Licensed article files are not redistributed.", "sources": [ { "id": "barrios-etal-2026", "title": "Labor and the Corporate Information Environment", "authors": "John Manuel Barrios, Jung Ho Choi, Carolyn Deller, Joseph Pacelli, and Heidi A. Packard", "citationLabel": "Barrios et al. (2026)", "year": 2026, "outlet": "Working paper and Labor Life Cycle literature survey", "status": "Working paper", "doi": "10.2139/ssrn.6390718", "url": "https://barrios88.github.io/LAG_Survey/", "setting": "A structured survey of research connecting corporate information and rank-and-file labor.", "unitOfAnalysis": "Literature-level synthesis organized around stages of the employment relationship.", "observedOutcome": "Published findings and research-design patterns across the labor life cycle; the survey does not estimate a new firm- or worker-level outcome.", "leverage": "The Labor Life Cycle framework separates human-capital development, search and matching, employment, and turnover or retirement.", "identifyingComparison": "None in the survey itself; it compares constructs, designs, and evidence across prior studies.", "estimandOrTarget": "A conceptual map of how corporate information and labor interact across employment stages, not a causal estimand.", "supportedConclusion": "Accounting information can be studied as both an input produced by workers and an information source used in labor-market decisions.", "boundary": "A literature survey organizes evidence; it does not itself identify a causal effect in a new sample.", "sections": [ "why-labor", "research-boundaries" ] }, { "id": "choi-gipper-malik-2023", "title": "Financial Reporting Quality and Wage Differentials: Evidence from Worker-Level Data", "authors": "Jung Ho Choi, Brandon Gipper, and Sara Malik", "citationLabel": "Choi, Gipper, and Malik (2023)", "year": 2023, "outlet": "Journal of Accounting Research 61(4), 1109–1158", "status": "Published", "doi": "10.1111/1475-679X.12477", "url": "https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1475-679X.12477", "setting": "U.S. employer–employee matched data and reporting-quality shocks or signals.", "unitOfAnalysis": "Worker–firm employment observations and worker moves across firms.", "observedOutcome": "Worker wages, wage differentials across employers, and wage changes around worker moves.", "leverage": "Worker controls, switcher designs, structural decomposition, and settings involving Arthur Andersen clients and internal-control weakness announcements.", "identifyingComparison": "Within-worker and switcher comparisons, structural decomposition, and reporting-quality settings involving Arthur Andersen clients and internal-control weakness announcements.", "estimandOrTarget": "The wage differential associated with employer financial-reporting quality and the compensation workers receive for reporting-related employment risk.", "supportedConclusion": "The evidence is consistent with workers receiving wage compensation for risks associated with lower financial reporting quality.", "boundary": "The paper does not imply that every reporting-quality proxy is exogenous or that all wage differences reflect a single mechanism.", "sections": [ "why-labor", "worker-decisions" ] }, { "id": "dehaan-li-zhou-2023", "title": "Financial Reporting and Employee Job Search", "authors": "Ed deHaan, Nan Li, and Frank S. Zhou", "citationLabel": "deHaan, Li, and Zhou (2023)", "year": 2023, "outlet": "Journal of Accounting Research 61(2), 571–617", "status": "Published", "doi": "10.1111/1475-679X.12469", "url": "https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1475-679X.12469", "setting": "Current employees’ online job-search activity around their own employers’ earnings announcements.", "unitOfAnalysis": "Employer–week and employee search behavior observed on a job-search platform.", "observedOutcome": "Current employees’ employer-specific external job-search activity around earnings announcements.", "leverage": "High-frequency timing around earnings announcements, heterogeneity in mobility, and information frictions.", "identifyingComparison": "Within-employer high-frequency search around announcement timing, earnings news, worker mobility, and information-friction heterogeneity.", "estimandOrTarget": "The announcement-window change in observed search activity, not completed applications, offers, departures, or realized turnover.", "supportedConclusion": "Employees increase external job search around earnings announcements in patterns consistent with learning about employment prospects.", "boundary": "Search activity is not the same as a completed application, offer, departure, or causal estimate of realized turnover.", "sections": [ "worker-decisions" ] }, { "id": "choi-choi-malik-2023", "title": "Not Just for Investors: The Role of Earnings Announcements in Guiding Job Seekers", "authors": "Bong-Geun Choi, Jung Ho Choi, and Sara Malik", "citationLabel": "Choi, Choi, and Malik (2023)", "year": 2023, "outlet": "Journal of Accounting and Economics 76(1), 101588", "status": "Published", "doi": "10.1016/j.jacceco.2023.101588", "url": "https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165410123000125", "setting": "Anonymous job seekers’ firm-specific searches around prospective employers’ earnings announcements, supplemented by survey evidence.", "unitOfAnalysis": "Prospective employer–week search activity and survey responses.", "observedOutcome": "Prospective employees’ firm-specific search activity and survey-reported willingness to apply.", "leverage": "Announcement timing, earnings news, media attention, and a survey experiment about willingness to apply.", "identifyingComparison": "Search around prospective employers’ earnings announcements plus experimental variation in employer financial-performance information in the survey.", "estimandOrTarget": "Attention and application-propensity responses to employer financial information, not realized hiring or worker productivity.", "supportedConclusion": "Earnings announcements can direct attention and provide information relevant to job seekers evaluating prospective employers.", "boundary": "The primary search measure does not observe all applications or hires, and announcement timing and information bundles limit causal interpretation of the observational tests.", "sections": [ "worker-decisions" ] }, { "id": "choi-pacelli-etal-2023", "title": "Do Jobseekers Value Diversity Information? Evidence from a Field Experiment and Human Capital Disclosures", "authors": "Jung Ho Choi, Joseph Pacelli, Kristina M. Rennekamp, and Sorabh Tomar", "citationLabel": "Choi et al. (2023)", "year": 2023, "outlet": "Journal of Accounting Research 61(3), 695–735", "status": "Published", "doi": "10.1111/1475-679X.12474", "url": "https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1475-679X.12474", "setting": "A field experiment that changes the salience of workforce-diversity information in job recommendations, paired with disclosure evidence.", "unitOfAnalysis": "Jobseeker recommendation emails, clicks, and firm disclosures.", "observedOutcome": "Clicks on recommended jobs and related search choices when workforce-diversity information is made salient.", "leverage": "Randomized information salience in the field experiment and complementary archival analyses.", "identifyingComparison": "Random assignment of diversity-information salience in job-recommendation emails, supplemented by archival disclosure analyses.", "estimandOrTarget": "The intention-to-treat effect of information salience on revealed search choice, not completed applications, offers, or hires.", "supportedConclusion": "Making diversity information salient changes jobseekers’ revealed search choices, showing that workforce information can matter to prospective employees.", "boundary": "Clicks do not establish completed applications, offers, hires, wage tradeoffs, or long-run workforce composition.", "sections": [ "worker-decisions", "workforce-credibility" ] }, { "id": "sran-2025", "title": "Disclosing Labor Demand: Evidence from Online Job Postings", "authors": "Gurpal S. Sran", "citationLabel": "Sran (2025)", "year": 2025, "outlet": "The Accounting Review 100(5), 345–374", "status": "Published", "doi": "10.2308/TAR-2023-0062", "url": "https://doi.org/10.2308/tar-2023-0062", "setting": "Online job-posting content around trade-secrecy protections and variation in proprietary costs and labor-market tightness.", "unitOfAnalysis": "Firm job postings and posting-level disclosure characteristics.", "observedOutcome": "Skill detail, contextual specificity, and other disclosure choices in firm job postings.", "leverage": "The Defend Trade Secrets Act, secrecy exposure, and labor-market conditions illuminate the attraction-versus-proprietary-cost tradeoff.", "identifyingComparison": "Variation associated with the Defend Trade Secrets Act, firms’ secrecy exposure, proprietary costs, and labor-market tightness.", "estimandOrTarget": "Changes in job-posting disclosure choices attributable to the paper’s policy and cost variation, not realized hiring outcomes.", "supportedConclusion": "Job postings are strategic labor-market disclosures whose skill detail and contextual specificity reflect both applicant attraction and proprietary-cost incentives.", "boundary": "Posting text does not reveal all internal labor demand, realized hires, worker quality, or downstream productivity.", "sections": [ "regulation-acquisition", "measurement" ] }, { "id": "choi-li-macciocchi-2026", "title": "Human Capital Disclosure and Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence from Regulation S-K", "authors": "Jung Ho Choi, Dan Li, and Daniele Macciocchi", "citationLabel": "Choi, Li, and Macciocchi (2026)", "year": 2026, "outlet": "Journal of Accounting Research", "status": "Published", "doi": "10.1111/1475-679X.70036", "url": "https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1475-679X.70036", "setting": "Public firms affected by the 2020 Regulation S-K human-capital disclosure mandate compared with matched private firms.", "unitOfAnalysis": "Firm job postings, recruitment outcomes, and workforce composition over time.", "observedOutcome": "Diversity-related posting language, recruitment outcomes, and subsequent workforce-composition measures.", "leverage": "A regulation-linked difference-in-differences design and short- versus longer-run outcome timing.", "identifyingComparison": "Difference-in-differences comparing mandate-exposed public firms with matched private firms before and after the 2020 Regulation S-K change.", "estimandOrTarget": "The differential change associated with disclosure-mandate exposure across short-run recruiting and longer-run workforce outcomes.", "supportedConclusion": "The mandate is associated with more diversity-related job-posting disclosure and recruitment frictions before later workforce-composition changes emerge.", "boundary": "The design does not imply that disclosure alone can immediately change labor supply or that all public–private differences are eliminated by matching and controls.", "sections": [ "regulation-acquisition", "research-boundaries" ] }, { "id": "baker-etal-2024", "title": "Diversity Washing", "authors": "Andrew C. Baker, David F. Larcker, Charles G. McClure, Durgesh Saraph, and Edward M. Watts", "citationLabel": "Baker et al. (2024)", "year": 2024, "outlet": "Journal of Accounting Research 62(5), 1661–1709", "status": "Published", "doi": "10.1111/1475-679X.12542", "url": "https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1475-679X.12542", "setting": "Voluntary corporate diversity disclosures compared with workforce composition inferred from employee-history data.", "unitOfAnalysis": "Firm-year disclosure–workforce gaps and subsequent firm outcomes.", "observedOutcome": "Firm-year gaps between voluntary diversity claims and employee-history-based workforce composition, plus subsequent firm outcomes.", "leverage": "A disclosure-versus-realized-workforce measure, textual analysis, and future outcomes.", "identifyingComparison": "Cross-sectional and intertemporal variation in disclosure–workforce gaps, textual features, and future outcomes.", "estimandOrTarget": "Associations between larger disclosure–workforce gaps and credibility-related indicators, not managers’ unobserved intent.", "supportedConclusion": "Large gaps between voluntary diversity claims and observed workforce composition are associated with indicators consistent with weaker disclosure credibility.", "boundary": "A measured gap does not directly reveal managers’ subjective intent, and employee-history data have coverage and classification limitations.", "sections": [ "workforce-credibility", "measurement" ] }, { "id": "chung-etal-2016", "title": "Do Managers Withhold Good News from Labor Unions?", "authors": "Richard Chung, Bryan Byung-Hee Lee, Woo-Jong Lee, and Byungcherl Charlie Sohn", "citationLabel": "Chung et al. (2016)", "year": 2016, "outlet": "Management Science 62(1), 46–68", "status": "Published", "doi": "10.1287/mnsc.2014.2075", "url": "https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/10.1287/mnsc.2014.2075", "setting": "South Korean firms with varying union strength and bargaining schedules.", "unitOfAnalysis": "Firm disclosure frequency and news timing around labor negotiations.", "observedOutcome": "The frequency and timing of favorable and unfavorable corporate disclosures around labor negotiations.", "leverage": "Variation in union strength, news valence, and bargaining periods.", "identifyingComparison": "Variation in union strength, news valence, and bargaining periods among South Korean firms.", "estimandOrTarget": "Disclosure responses associated with labor-bargaining incentives in the studied institutional setting.", "supportedConclusion": "Disclosure timing and frequency can reflect managers’ bargaining incentives toward employees, not only investor information demand.", "boundary": "The institutional setting and observational design do not establish that the same bargaining response occurs in every country or workforce context.", "sections": [ "workforce-credibility", "research-boundaries" ] }, { "id": "brown-matsa-2016", "title": "Boarding a Sinking Ship? An Investigation of Job Applications to Distressed Firms", "authors": "Jennifer Brown and David A. Matsa", "citationLabel": "Brown and Matsa (2016)", "year": 2016, "outlet": "The Journal of Finance 71(2), 507–550", "status": "Published", "doi": "10.1111/jofi.12367", "url": "https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jofi.12367", "setting": "Applications to large financial firms during the Great Recession, combined with measures of employer financial distress.", "unitOfAnalysis": "Job posting–applicant responses and applicant quality.", "observedOutcome": "The quantity and quality of applications to large financial firms during the Great Recession.", "leverage": "Changes in firm distress, accounting and credit-risk information, and heterogeneity in unemployment protection and job requirements.", "identifyingComparison": "Variation in employer financial distress, unemployment protection, accounting and credit-risk signals, and job requirements.", "estimandOrTarget": "Applicant responses to employer distress in the crisis-era financial-sector setting.", "supportedConclusion": "Employer financial distress reduces applicant quantity and quality in this setting, consistent with workers pricing employment risk.", "boundary": "The crisis-era financial-sector setting does not establish the same magnitude for all industries, periods, or types of workforce news.", "sections": [ "why-labor", "worker-decisions", "workforce-credibility" ] }, { "id": "gutierrez-etal-2020", "title": "Are Online Job Postings Informative to Investors?", "authors": "Elizabeth Gutiérrez, Ben Lourie, Alexander Nekrasov, and Terry Shevlin", "citationLabel": "Gutiérrez et al. (2020)", "year": 2020, "outlet": "Management Science 66(7), 3133–3141", "status": "Published", "doi": "10.1287/mnsc.2019.3450", "url": "https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/10.1287/mnsc.2019.3450", "setting": "Firm-level changes in online job-posting volume, future operations, and investor responses.", "unitOfAnalysis": "Firm-period posting counts, future performance, and market reactions.", "observedOutcome": "Firm-level posting-volume changes, subsequent operations, and investor responses.", "leverage": "Distinguishing postings likely to represent growth from replacement hiring and testing future outcomes.", "identifyingComparison": "Changes in posting volume, including distinctions between postings more likely to reflect growth and replacement hiring.", "estimandOrTarget": "The predictive association between posting-volume changes and future firm outcomes, not the causal effect of hiring.", "supportedConclusion": "Changes in posting volume contain forward-looking information about firm growth and can be informative beyond traditional investor-relations disclosures.", "boundary": "Posting counts alone do not identify occupation, skill, location, posting intent, vacancy fulfillment, or causal hiring effects.", "sections": [ "measurement" ] }, { "id": "chen-li-2023", "title": "Is Hiring Fast a Good Sign? The Informativeness of Job Vacancy Duration for Future Firm Profitability", "authors": "Ciao-Wei Chen and Laura Yue Li", "citationLabel": "Chen and Li (2023)", "year": 2023, "outlet": "Review of Accounting Studies 28, 1316–1353", "status": "Published", "doi": "10.1007/s11142-023-09797-2", "url": "https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11142-023-09797-2", "setting": "Online job vacancies whose posting and removal dates permit measurement of vacancy duration.", "unitOfAnalysis": "Firm-level vacancy duration by job type and subsequent profitability.", "observedOutcome": "Vacancy duration by job type and subsequent firm profitability.", "leverage": "Separating low- and high-skill vacancies to distinguish opportunity-cost and screening interpretations.", "identifyingComparison": "Differences in vacancy duration and future profitability for low- versus high-skill postings.", "estimandOrTarget": "Skill-specific associations between vacancy duration and future profitability, explicitly not a clean causal hiring effect.", "supportedConclusion": "Vacancy duration contains different information for low- versus high-skill hiring and is associated with future profitability.", "boundary": "Posting disappearance is an imperfect proxy for hiring, and the paper explicitly treats the central profitability relations as associations rather than clean causal effects.", "sections": [ "measurement", "research-boundaries" ] }, { "id": "sorkin-2018", "title": "Ranking Firms Using Revealed Preference", "authors": "Isaac Sorkin", "citationLabel": "Sorkin (2018)", "year": 2018, "outlet": "The Quarterly Journal of Economics 133(3), 1331–1393", "status": "Published", "doi": "10.1093/qje/qjy001", "url": "https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/133/3/1331/4813638", "setting": "U.S. administrative employer-to-employer worker transitions.", "unitOfAnalysis": "Worker flows among firms and the network structure of employer choices.", "observedOutcome": "Directed employer-to-employer worker flows and the resulting ranking of firms.", "leverage": "A revealed-preference ranking from directed worker flows, with controls for layoffs and recruiting intensity.", "identifyingComparison": "The network of worker transitions across firms, with adjustments for layoffs and recruiting intensity.", "estimandOrTarget": "A revealed-preference ranking of firm desirability under the model’s opportunity-set and preference assumptions.", "supportedConclusion": "Worker transition networks contain information about firm desirability and nonwage amenities that wage levels alone do not capture.", "boundary": "The ranking is not an accounting-disclosure effect and requires assumptions linking observed moves to worker preferences and available opportunities.", "sections": [ "measurement", "research-boundaries" ] }, { "id": "cullinan-etal-2023", "title": "Topic Modeling of 8-K Filings for Prediction of Market Reactions to Corporate Layoffs and Other Exit/Disposal Activities", "authors": "Charles P. Cullinan, Richard Holowczak, David Louton, and Hakan Saraoglu", "citationLabel": "Cullinan et al. (2023)", "year": 2023, "outlet": "Intelligent Systems in Accounting, Finance and Management 30(4), 173–191", "status": "Published", "doi": "10.1002/isaf.1545", "url": "https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/isaf.1545", "setting": "SEC Form 8-K Item 2.05 filings describing costs associated with exit or disposal activities, including workforce reductions.", "unitOfAnalysis": "Exit- or disposal-event 8-K filing and its announcement-window market reaction.", "observedOutcome": "Text-derived event topics and stock-market reactions to different types of Item 2.05 exit or disposal disclosures.", "leverage": "Topic modeling separates heterogeneous Item 2.05 events and compares announcement reactions across topics and the presence of a broader strategic initiative.", "identifyingComparison": "Cross-event comparisons among topic-classified Item 2.05 filings; the design is descriptive and event-study based rather than a randomized or policy-shock design.", "estimandOrTarget": "Differences in announcement-window market reactions across disclosed exit or disposal event types and strategic framing.", "supportedConclusion": "Item 2.05 filings pool economically different restructuring events, and workforce-reduction disclosures without a broader strategic initiative receive especially negative market reactions in the studied sample.", "boundary": "Topic classifications and market reactions do not establish managers’ true layoff motives, realized separation counts, disclosure completeness, or causal operating consequences.", "sections": [ "workforce-credibility", "research-boundaries" ] } ] }