Anmerkungen:
Nach Informationen von SSRN wurde die ursprüngliche Fassung des Dokuments October 6, 2020 erstellt
Beschreibung:
Government officials, advocacy groups, and the business press have raised concerns that former SEC employees may continue to influence the SEC after leaving the agency. Using a hand-collected database of lawyers who represent firms in responding to SEC comment letters, we examine the determinants of hiring a former SEC lawyer, and their impact on firms' resistance to the SEC comment letter process and on long-run outcomes. Relative to matching firms that involve only non-SEC lawyers, we find that firms that involve former SEC lawyers in responding to SEC comment letters have lower compliance costs in the short run, but have more adverse accounting and shareholder outcomes in the long run. Our main results are driven largely by lawyers who had left the SEC more recently and are therefore more likely to be able to influence former colleagues still working at the agency