Research

Earnings Announcements and Job Postings

Hongye Yang, Juan Manuel García Lara, and Bing Guo

We study whether firms adjust recruitment before releasing negative earnings news. Using U.S. online job postings, earnings-announcement data, employee-flow records, and capital-market outcomes, we document that firms with negative earnings surprises increase posting activity during the three quarters before the announcement and reduce it afterward. The pattern reflects an intertemporal reallocation of recruitment rather than a persistent expansion in labor demand. Firms that front-load postings subsequently hire more workers and target positions with different skill and seniority requirements, but the behavior is not associated with more favorable market responses or stronger later operating performance. The findings show that anticipated bad news creates labor-market frictions that affect when firms recruit and how they structure vacancies, while public job-posting activity does not provide investors with a simple signal of future firm performance.

Presented at: EAA Doctoral Colloquium (Prague, 2026); UC3M Internal Seminar (Madrid, 2026); XIX International Accounting Research Symposium (Madrid, 2025); Madrid Work & Organization Workshop (Madrid, 2025); Finance and Product Markets: Theory, Evidence, and Measurements (Lugano, 2024); XVIII International Accounting Research Symposium (Madrid, 2024); Accounting Summer Camp – Emerging Researchers Consortium (Bozen–Bolzano, 2024); Accounting for Private Entities & Non-investor Stakeholders (HEC Paris, 2024).

• Earnings announcements
• Job postings
• Hiring timing
• Labor-market frictions
• Capital markets

Reporting Regulation and the Acquisition of Human Capital

Robert M. Bushman, Wayne R. Landsman, and Hongye Yang

We study whether financial reporting environments affect private firms’ acquisition of specialized human capital. Using European reporting thresholds, Orbis financial statements, and Revelio career-history data, we construct a reporting-intensity measure that combines country-specific exemption thresholds with standardized industry firm-size distributions. The outcome is the share of realized new hires whose skill profiles contain the most specialized skills in their industry-year. Firms operating in higher reporting-intensity environments hire a larger share of workers with specialized skills. Cross-sectional and boundary analyses are consistent with lower labor-market information frictions and peer-information spillovers rather than broad hiring expansion or a credit-access channel. The evidence is interpreted as a reduced-form relation between reporting environments and the skill composition of realized hiring, not as a firm-level compliance effect or a measure of worker quality.

Presented at: AAA Doctoral Consortium, Dallas, June 2026.

• Reporting regulation
• Specialized human capital
• Private firms
• Information frictions
• Worker skills

When Do Layoff Announcements Become Accounting Events?

Hongye Yang

I examine when public layoff announcements become economically meaningful accounting events. Using WARN notices for U.S. public firms, market data, Compustat financial statements, and Revelio employee-flow and skill histories, I study market reactions and post-layoff changes in costs, operating outcomes, and workforce composition. Layoff news generates substantial trading activity but does not map cleanly into a single valuation response or financial-reporting consequence. I distinguish events associated with cumulative workforce contraction from events accompanied by replacement-driven turnover and examine whether these groups differ in restructuring recognition, committed operating costs, and subsequent labor allocation. The project also develops a source-linked measure of management’s stated layoff rationale from conference calls and SEC filings; that text measure remains under validation and is not used as evidence of private managerial intent. The paper frames layoff announcements as incomplete public signals whose economic content becomes clearer when accounting and employee-flow data are combined.

• Layoffs
• WARN notices
• Accounting recognition
• Employee flows
• Incomplete signals

Pay Transparency and the Informativeness of Job Postings

Hongye Yang and Wei Hou

We study how public-posting pay-transparency mandates reshape the labor-market information environment. The project first verifies state-level salary-disclosure requirements, effective dates, scope, and exemptions. It then examines whether the mandates increase employer-posted salary disclosure, change how representative identifiable public job postings are of realized hiring, and affect workers’ subsequent movement across public and private organizational boundaries. Using Revelio job postings and worker histories, we construct posting-to-hire alignment measures at the employer-state-occupation-quarter level and direct worker-flow measures that require positively identified public origins and validated destination status. The design compares treated states with eligible never-treated and not-yet-treated states while preserving exact law dates and transition quarters. The project is in progress; the legal portfolio and measurement contracts are being validated before causal estimates are reported.

• Pay transparency
• Job postings
• Posting-to-hire alignment
• Worker mobility
• Labor-market disclosure