HCYHongye Chris Yang
PhD and advanced master’s accounting

Labor Markets in Accounting Research

A six-part seminar module on how corporate information reaches workers and applicants, how firms disclose labor demand, and how researchers measure hiring, employment, turnover, and workforce credibility without outrunning the design.

Framing readings: Barrios et al. (2026); deHaan, Li, and Zhou (2023); Sran (2025)

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Seminar design

Learning objectives

Students should leave with a research-design map, not a list of conclusions. Each section asks what the data observe, what variation supplies leverage, and what the paper cannot establish.

Students should be able to

  1. Explain why workers and applicants are users, producers, and subjects of corporate information.
  2. Distinguish labor-market disclosure channels from capital-market disclosure channels.
  3. Evaluate whether a design measures search, applications, hiring, employment, turnover, or beliefs.
  4. Separate an empirical result from the mechanism or policy interpretation attached to it.
  5. Identify measurement error and coverage limits in job-posting and employee-history data.
  6. Develop a labor-accounting research question with a credible treatment, counterfactual, and claim boundary.

Suggested seminar sequence

  1. 15 minutes: why workers and applicants belong in the corporate information environment.
  2. 20 minutes: worker and applicant decisions—search, applications, hiring, and departures.
  3. 15 minutes: reporting regulation, labor demand, and human-capital acquisition.
  4. 15 minutes: workforce disclosure credibility, layoffs, and construct timing.
  5. 15 minutes: job-posting and employee-history measurement.
  6. 10 minutes: concept checks and research-design memo launch.

1. Why labor markets belong in accounting

Intellectual tension

Accounting research often begins with investors, creditors, managers, and auditors. Labor-market research asks what changes when rank-and-file workers and applicants also produce, interpret, and respond to corporate information.Sources: Barrios et al. (2026)

Evidence versus interpretation

Evidence can show that reporting quality, distress, or disclosure correlates with wages, applications, or worker choices. Interpreting those patterns as information use, risk pricing, bargaining, or sorting requires a design that separates competing channels.Sources: Choi, Gipper, and Malik (2023); Brown and Matsa (2016)

Open research question

Which accounting signals reach workers directly, which arrive through media or managers, and when do they change real matching rather than only beliefs?Framing readings: Barrios et al. (2026)

Working paper2026

Labor and the Corporate Information Environment

John Manuel Barrios, Jung Ho Choi, Carolyn Deller, Joseph Pacelli, and Heidi A. Packard

Working paper and Labor Life Cycle literature survey · DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.6390718

Setting
A structured survey of research connecting corporate information and rank-and-file labor.
Unit of analysis
Literature-level synthesis organized around stages of the employment relationship.
Observed outcome
Published findings and research-design patterns across the labor life cycle; the survey does not estimate a new firm- or worker-level outcome.
Empirical leverage
The Labor Life Cycle framework separates human-capital development, search and matching, employment, and turnover or retirement.
Identifying comparison or variation
None in the survey itself; it compares constructs, designs, and evidence across prior studies.
Estimand or design target
A conceptual map of how corporate information and labor interact across employment stages, not a causal estimand.
What the evidence supports
Accounting information can be studied as both an input produced by workers and an information source used in labor-market decisions.
Claim boundary
A literature survey organizes evidence; it does not itself identify a causal effect in a new sample.
Published2023

Financial Reporting Quality and Wage Differentials: Evidence from Worker-Level Data

Jung Ho Choi, Brandon Gipper, and Sara Malik

Journal of Accounting Research 61(4), 1109–1158 · DOI: 10.1111/1475-679X.12477

Setting
U.S. employer–employee matched data and reporting-quality shocks or signals.
Unit of analysis
Worker–firm employment observations and worker moves across firms.
Observed outcome
Worker wages, wage differentials across employers, and wage changes around worker moves.
Empirical leverage
Worker controls, switcher designs, structural decomposition, and settings involving Arthur Andersen clients and internal-control weakness announcements.
Identifying comparison or variation
Within-worker and switcher comparisons, structural decomposition, and reporting-quality settings involving Arthur Andersen clients and internal-control weakness announcements.
Estimand or design target
The wage differential associated with employer financial-reporting quality and the compensation workers receive for reporting-related employment risk.
What the evidence supports
The evidence is consistent with workers receiving wage compensation for risks associated with lower financial reporting quality.
Claim boundary
The paper does not imply that every reporting-quality proxy is exogenous or that all wage differences reflect a single mechanism.
Published2016

Boarding a Sinking Ship? An Investigation of Job Applications to Distressed Firms

Jennifer Brown and David A. Matsa

The Journal of Finance 71(2), 507–550 · DOI: 10.1111/jofi.12367

Setting
Applications to large financial firms during the Great Recession, combined with measures of employer financial distress.
Unit of analysis
Job posting–applicant responses and applicant quality.
Observed outcome
The quantity and quality of applications to large financial firms during the Great Recession.
Empirical leverage
Changes in firm distress, accounting and credit-risk information, and heterogeneity in unemployment protection and job requirements.
Identifying comparison or variation
Variation in employer financial distress, unemployment protection, accounting and credit-risk signals, and job requirements.
Estimand or design target
Applicant responses to employer distress in the crisis-era financial-sector setting.
What the evidence supports
Employer financial distress reduces applicant quantity and quality in this setting, consistent with workers pricing employment risk.
Claim boundary
The crisis-era financial-sector setting does not establish the same magnitude for all industries, periods, or types of workforce news.

2. Financial information and worker or applicant decisions

Intellectual tension

A search click, an application, a job acceptance, and a departure are different outcomes. A strong paper matches the information event to the decision stage it can actually observe.Sources: deHaan, Li, and Zhou (2023); Choi, Choi, and Malik (2023)

Evidence versus interpretation

High-frequency search behavior supports attention or learning claims more directly than realized mobility claims. Field experiments strengthen information-salience inference but still may stop before applications, offers, or hires.Sources: deHaan, Li, and Zhou (2023); Choi et al. (2023)

Open research question

How do workers combine financial performance, workforce disclosures, private workplace information, and nonwage amenities when choosing an employer?Framing readings: Brown and Matsa (2016); Choi, Gipper, and Malik (2023)

Published2023

Financial Reporting and Employee Job Search

Ed deHaan, Nan Li, and Frank S. Zhou

Journal of Accounting Research 61(2), 571–617 · DOI: 10.1111/1475-679X.12469

Setting
Current employees’ online job-search activity around their own employers’ earnings announcements.
Unit of analysis
Employer–week and employee search behavior observed on a job-search platform.
Observed outcome
Current employees’ employer-specific external job-search activity around earnings announcements.
Empirical leverage
High-frequency timing around earnings announcements, heterogeneity in mobility, and information frictions.
Identifying comparison or variation
Within-employer high-frequency search around announcement timing, earnings news, worker mobility, and information-friction heterogeneity.
Estimand or design target
The announcement-window change in observed search activity, not completed applications, offers, departures, or realized turnover.
What the evidence supports
Employees increase external job search around earnings announcements in patterns consistent with learning about employment prospects.
Claim boundary
Search activity is not the same as a completed application, offer, departure, or causal estimate of realized turnover.
Published2023

Not Just for Investors: The Role of Earnings Announcements in Guiding Job Seekers

Bong-Geun Choi, Jung Ho Choi, and Sara Malik

Journal of Accounting and Economics 76(1), 101588 · DOI: 10.1016/j.jacceco.2023.101588

Setting
Anonymous job seekers’ firm-specific searches around prospective employers’ earnings announcements, supplemented by survey evidence.
Unit of analysis
Prospective employer–week search activity and survey responses.
Observed outcome
Prospective employees’ firm-specific search activity and survey-reported willingness to apply.
Empirical leverage
Announcement timing, earnings news, media attention, and a survey experiment about willingness to apply.
Identifying comparison or variation
Search around prospective employers’ earnings announcements plus experimental variation in employer financial-performance information in the survey.
Estimand or design target
Attention and application-propensity responses to employer financial information, not realized hiring or worker productivity.
What the evidence supports
Earnings announcements can direct attention and provide information relevant to job seekers evaluating prospective employers.
Claim 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.
Published2023

Do Jobseekers Value Diversity Information? Evidence from a Field Experiment and Human Capital Disclosures

Jung Ho Choi, Joseph Pacelli, Kristina M. Rennekamp, and Sorabh Tomar

Journal of Accounting Research 61(3), 695–735 · 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.
Unit of analysis
Jobseeker recommendation emails, clicks, and firm disclosures.
Observed outcome
Clicks on recommended jobs and related search choices when workforce-diversity information is made salient.
Empirical leverage
Randomized information salience in the field experiment and complementary archival analyses.
Identifying comparison or variation
Random assignment of diversity-information salience in job-recommendation emails, supplemented by archival disclosure analyses.
Estimand or design target
The intention-to-treat effect of information salience on revealed search choice, not completed applications, offers, or hires.
What the evidence supports
Making diversity information salient changes jobseekers’ revealed search choices, showing that workforce information can matter to prospective employees.
Claim boundary
Clicks do not establish completed applications, offers, hires, wage tradeoffs, or long-run workforce composition.
Published2016

Boarding a Sinking Ship? An Investigation of Job Applications to Distressed Firms

Jennifer Brown and David A. Matsa

The Journal of Finance 71(2), 507–550 · DOI: 10.1111/jofi.12367

Setting
Applications to large financial firms during the Great Recession, combined with measures of employer financial distress.
Unit of analysis
Job posting–applicant responses and applicant quality.
Observed outcome
The quantity and quality of applications to large financial firms during the Great Recession.
Empirical leverage
Changes in firm distress, accounting and credit-risk information, and heterogeneity in unemployment protection and job requirements.
Identifying comparison or variation
Variation in employer financial distress, unemployment protection, accounting and credit-risk signals, and job requirements.
Estimand or design target
Applicant responses to employer distress in the crisis-era financial-sector setting.
What the evidence supports
Employer financial distress reduces applicant quantity and quality in this setting, consistent with workers pricing employment risk.
Claim boundary
The crisis-era financial-sector setting does not establish the same magnitude for all industries, periods, or types of workforce news.

3. Reporting regulation and human-capital acquisition

Intellectual tension

A mandate may change what firms disclose without immediately changing the supply of qualified workers. Recruitment responses can therefore precede workforce-composition responses.Sources: Choi, Li, and Macciocchi (2026)

Evidence versus interpretation

A regulation-based design needs a credible exposure definition, comparison group, timing, and parallel-trends logic. A text change is an intermediate outcome, not proof of successful human-capital acquisition.Sources: Choi, Li, and Macciocchi (2026); Sran (2025)

Open research question

Which reporting mandates change recruiting strategy, applicant sorting, vacancy duration, or the types of skills firms can acquire—and through which information or compliance mechanism?Framing readings: Sran (2025); Choi, Li, and Macciocchi (2026)

Published2025

Disclosing Labor Demand: Evidence from Online Job Postings

Gurpal S. Sran

The Accounting Review 100(5), 345–374 · DOI: 10.2308/TAR-2023-0062

Setting
Online job-posting content around trade-secrecy protections and variation in proprietary costs and labor-market tightness.
Unit of analysis
Firm job postings and posting-level disclosure characteristics.
Observed outcome
Skill detail, contextual specificity, and other disclosure choices in firm job postings.
Empirical leverage
The Defend Trade Secrets Act, secrecy exposure, and labor-market conditions illuminate the attraction-versus-proprietary-cost tradeoff.
Identifying comparison or variation
Variation associated with the Defend Trade Secrets Act, firms’ secrecy exposure, proprietary costs, and labor-market tightness.
Estimand or design target
Changes in job-posting disclosure choices attributable to the paper’s policy and cost variation, not realized hiring outcomes.
What the evidence supports
Job postings are strategic labor-market disclosures whose skill detail and contextual specificity reflect both applicant attraction and proprietary-cost incentives.
Claim boundary
Posting text does not reveal all internal labor demand, realized hires, worker quality, or downstream productivity.
Published2026

Human Capital Disclosure and Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence from Regulation S-K

Jung Ho Choi, Dan Li, and Daniele Macciocchi

Journal of Accounting Research · 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.
Unit of analysis
Firm job postings, recruitment outcomes, and workforce composition over time.
Observed outcome
Diversity-related posting language, recruitment outcomes, and subsequent workforce-composition measures.
Empirical leverage
A regulation-linked difference-in-differences design and short- versus longer-run outcome timing.
Identifying comparison or variation
Difference-in-differences comparing mandate-exposed public firms with matched private firms before and after the 2020 Regulation S-K change.
Estimand or design target
The differential change associated with disclosure-mandate exposure across short-run recruiting and longer-run workforce outcomes.
What the evidence supports
The mandate is associated with more diversity-related job-posting disclosure and recruitment frictions before later workforce-composition changes emerge.
Claim 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.

4. Workforce disclosures, layoffs, and disclosure credibility

Intellectual tension

Workforce language may inform labor markets, protect bargaining positions, recruit applicants, or manage impressions. Credibility is an empirical comparison between claims, actions, and outcomes—not a tone label alone.Sources: Baker et al. (2024); Chung et al. (2016); Cullinan et al. (2023)

Evidence versus interpretation

Disclosure–outcome gaps and strategic timing can support credibility concerns, but they do not directly reveal subjective intent. Layoff research faces an additional boundary: announced reasons, legal notices, realized separations, and restructuring charges capture different constructs and dates.Sources: Baker et al. (2024); Cullinan et al. (2023)

Open research question

When firms explain layoffs, workforce investment, diversity, or restructuring, which observable actions can validate the claim without assuming that a disclosed reason is the true motive?Framing readings: Baker et al. (2024); Cullinan et al. (2023)

Published2024

Diversity Washing

Andrew C. Baker, David F. Larcker, Charles G. McClure, Durgesh Saraph, and Edward M. Watts

Journal of Accounting Research 62(5), 1661–1709 · DOI: 10.1111/1475-679X.12542

Setting
Voluntary corporate diversity disclosures compared with workforce composition inferred from employee-history data.
Unit of analysis
Firm-year disclosure–workforce gaps and subsequent firm outcomes.
Observed outcome
Firm-year gaps between voluntary diversity claims and employee-history-based workforce composition, plus subsequent firm outcomes.
Empirical leverage
A disclosure-versus-realized-workforce measure, textual analysis, and future outcomes.
Identifying comparison or variation
Cross-sectional and intertemporal variation in disclosure–workforce gaps, textual features, and future outcomes.
Estimand or design target
Associations between larger disclosure–workforce gaps and credibility-related indicators, not managers’ unobserved intent.
What the evidence supports
Large gaps between voluntary diversity claims and observed workforce composition are associated with indicators consistent with weaker disclosure credibility.
Claim boundary
A measured gap does not directly reveal managers’ subjective intent, and employee-history data have coverage and classification limitations.
Published2016

Do Managers Withhold Good News from Labor Unions?

Richard Chung, Bryan Byung-Hee Lee, Woo-Jong Lee, and Byungcherl Charlie Sohn

Management Science 62(1), 46–68 · DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2014.2075

Setting
South Korean firms with varying union strength and bargaining schedules.
Unit of analysis
Firm disclosure frequency and news timing around labor negotiations.
Observed outcome
The frequency and timing of favorable and unfavorable corporate disclosures around labor negotiations.
Empirical leverage
Variation in union strength, news valence, and bargaining periods.
Identifying comparison or variation
Variation in union strength, news valence, and bargaining periods among South Korean firms.
Estimand or design target
Disclosure responses associated with labor-bargaining incentives in the studied institutional setting.
What the evidence supports
Disclosure timing and frequency can reflect managers’ bargaining incentives toward employees, not only investor information demand.
Claim boundary
The institutional setting and observational design do not establish that the same bargaining response occurs in every country or workforce context.
Published2023

Do Jobseekers Value Diversity Information? Evidence from a Field Experiment and Human Capital Disclosures

Jung Ho Choi, Joseph Pacelli, Kristina M. Rennekamp, and Sorabh Tomar

Journal of Accounting Research 61(3), 695–735 · 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.
Unit of analysis
Jobseeker recommendation emails, clicks, and firm disclosures.
Observed outcome
Clicks on recommended jobs and related search choices when workforce-diversity information is made salient.
Empirical leverage
Randomized information salience in the field experiment and complementary archival analyses.
Identifying comparison or variation
Random assignment of diversity-information salience in job-recommendation emails, supplemented by archival disclosure analyses.
Estimand or design target
The intention-to-treat effect of information salience on revealed search choice, not completed applications, offers, or hires.
What the evidence supports
Making diversity information salient changes jobseekers’ revealed search choices, showing that workforce information can matter to prospective employees.
Claim boundary
Clicks do not establish completed applications, offers, hires, wage tradeoffs, or long-run workforce composition.
Published2016

Boarding a Sinking Ship? An Investigation of Job Applications to Distressed Firms

Jennifer Brown and David A. Matsa

The Journal of Finance 71(2), 507–550 · DOI: 10.1111/jofi.12367

Setting
Applications to large financial firms during the Great Recession, combined with measures of employer financial distress.
Unit of analysis
Job posting–applicant responses and applicant quality.
Observed outcome
The quantity and quality of applications to large financial firms during the Great Recession.
Empirical leverage
Changes in firm distress, accounting and credit-risk information, and heterogeneity in unemployment protection and job requirements.
Identifying comparison or variation
Variation in employer financial distress, unemployment protection, accounting and credit-risk signals, and job requirements.
Estimand or design target
Applicant responses to employer distress in the crisis-era financial-sector setting.
What the evidence supports
Employer financial distress reduces applicant quantity and quality in this setting, consistent with workers pricing employment risk.
Claim boundary
The crisis-era financial-sector setting does not establish the same magnitude for all industries, periods, or types of workforce news.
Published2023

Topic Modeling of 8-K Filings for Prediction of Market Reactions to Corporate Layoffs and Other Exit/Disposal Activities

Charles P. Cullinan, Richard Holowczak, David Louton, and Hakan Saraoglu

Intelligent Systems in Accounting, Finance and Management 30(4), 173–191 · 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.
Unit of analysis
Exit- or disposal-event 8-K filing and its announcement-window market reaction.
Observed outcome
Text-derived event topics and stock-market reactions to different types of Item 2.05 exit or disposal disclosures.
Empirical leverage
Topic modeling separates heterogeneous Item 2.05 events and compares announcement reactions across topics and the presence of a broader strategic initiative.
Identifying comparison or variation
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.
Estimand or design target
Differences in announcement-window market reactions across disclosed exit or disposal event types and strategic framing.
What the evidence supports
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.
Claim boundary
Topic classifications and market reactions do not establish managers’ true layoff motives, realized separation counts, disclosure completeness, or causal operating consequences.

5. Job postings, employee histories, and measurement

Intellectual tension

Naturally occurring labor data are behaviorally rich but were not created for the researcher’s construct. A posting can be duplicated, evergreen, replacement hiring, pipeline building, or removed without a hire; an online résumé can be stale or selectively observed.Sources: Gutiérrez et al. (2020); Chen and Li (2023); Baker et al. (2024)

Evidence versus interpretation

Posting volume, text, duration, and worker flows answer different questions. Measurement validity improves when the paper defines the unit, deduplicates records, establishes coverage, validates against an external outcome, and reports unresolved cases.Sources: Gutiérrez et al. (2020); Chen and Li (2023); Sorkin (2018)

Open research question

How can researchers triangulate labor demand and realized employment using postings, application data, payroll or administrative records, professional profiles, and disclosures without treating any one source as ground truth?Framing readings: Sorkin (2018); Baker et al. (2024)

Published2020

Are Online Job Postings Informative to Investors?

Elizabeth Gutiérrez, Ben Lourie, Alexander Nekrasov, and Terry Shevlin

Management Science 66(7), 3133–3141 · DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2019.3450

Setting
Firm-level changes in online job-posting volume, future operations, and investor responses.
Unit of analysis
Firm-period posting counts, future performance, and market reactions.
Observed outcome
Firm-level posting-volume changes, subsequent operations, and investor responses.
Empirical leverage
Distinguishing postings likely to represent growth from replacement hiring and testing future outcomes.
Identifying comparison or variation
Changes in posting volume, including distinctions between postings more likely to reflect growth and replacement hiring.
Estimand or design target
The predictive association between posting-volume changes and future firm outcomes, not the causal effect of hiring.
What the evidence supports
Changes in posting volume contain forward-looking information about firm growth and can be informative beyond traditional investor-relations disclosures.
Claim boundary
Posting counts alone do not identify occupation, skill, location, posting intent, vacancy fulfillment, or causal hiring effects.
Published2023

Is Hiring Fast a Good Sign? The Informativeness of Job Vacancy Duration for Future Firm Profitability

Ciao-Wei Chen and Laura Yue Li

Review of Accounting Studies 28, 1316–1353 · DOI: 10.1007/s11142-023-09797-2

Setting
Online job vacancies whose posting and removal dates permit measurement of vacancy duration.
Unit of analysis
Firm-level vacancy duration by job type and subsequent profitability.
Observed outcome
Vacancy duration by job type and subsequent firm profitability.
Empirical leverage
Separating low- and high-skill vacancies to distinguish opportunity-cost and screening interpretations.
Identifying comparison or variation
Differences in vacancy duration and future profitability for low- versus high-skill postings.
Estimand or design target
Skill-specific associations between vacancy duration and future profitability, explicitly not a clean causal hiring effect.
What the evidence supports
Vacancy duration contains different information for low- versus high-skill hiring and is associated with future profitability.
Claim 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.
Published2025

Disclosing Labor Demand: Evidence from Online Job Postings

Gurpal S. Sran

The Accounting Review 100(5), 345–374 · DOI: 10.2308/TAR-2023-0062

Setting
Online job-posting content around trade-secrecy protections and variation in proprietary costs and labor-market tightness.
Unit of analysis
Firm job postings and posting-level disclosure characteristics.
Observed outcome
Skill detail, contextual specificity, and other disclosure choices in firm job postings.
Empirical leverage
The Defend Trade Secrets Act, secrecy exposure, and labor-market conditions illuminate the attraction-versus-proprietary-cost tradeoff.
Identifying comparison or variation
Variation associated with the Defend Trade Secrets Act, firms’ secrecy exposure, proprietary costs, and labor-market tightness.
Estimand or design target
Changes in job-posting disclosure choices attributable to the paper’s policy and cost variation, not realized hiring outcomes.
What the evidence supports
Job postings are strategic labor-market disclosures whose skill detail and contextual specificity reflect both applicant attraction and proprietary-cost incentives.
Claim boundary
Posting text does not reveal all internal labor demand, realized hires, worker quality, or downstream productivity.
Published2024

Diversity Washing

Andrew C. Baker, David F. Larcker, Charles G. McClure, Durgesh Saraph, and Edward M. Watts

Journal of Accounting Research 62(5), 1661–1709 · DOI: 10.1111/1475-679X.12542

Setting
Voluntary corporate diversity disclosures compared with workforce composition inferred from employee-history data.
Unit of analysis
Firm-year disclosure–workforce gaps and subsequent firm outcomes.
Observed outcome
Firm-year gaps between voluntary diversity claims and employee-history-based workforce composition, plus subsequent firm outcomes.
Empirical leverage
A disclosure-versus-realized-workforce measure, textual analysis, and future outcomes.
Identifying comparison or variation
Cross-sectional and intertemporal variation in disclosure–workforce gaps, textual features, and future outcomes.
Estimand or design target
Associations between larger disclosure–workforce gaps and credibility-related indicators, not managers’ unobserved intent.
What the evidence supports
Large gaps between voluntary diversity claims and observed workforce composition are associated with indicators consistent with weaker disclosure credibility.
Claim boundary
A measured gap does not directly reveal managers’ subjective intent, and employee-history data have coverage and classification limitations.
Published2018

Ranking Firms Using Revealed Preference

Isaac Sorkin

The Quarterly Journal of Economics 133(3), 1331–1393 · DOI: 10.1093/qje/qjy001

Setting
U.S. administrative employer-to-employer worker transitions.
Unit of analysis
Worker flows among firms and the network structure of employer choices.
Observed outcome
Directed employer-to-employer worker flows and the resulting ranking of firms.
Empirical leverage
A revealed-preference ranking from directed worker flows, with controls for layoffs and recruiting intensity.
Identifying comparison or variation
The network of worker transitions across firms, with adjustments for layoffs and recruiting intensity.
Estimand or design target
A revealed-preference ranking of firm desirability under the model’s opportunity-set and preference assumptions.
What the evidence supports
Worker transition networks contain information about firm desirability and nonwage amenities that wage levels alone do not capture.
Claim boundary
The ranking is not an accounting-disclosure effect and requires assumptions linking observed moves to worker preferences and available opportunities.

6. Open questions and research-design boundaries

Intellectual tension

Novel data do not substitute for identification. The research question should determine the treatment, unit, outcome, timing, counterfactual, and estimand before the analyst selects a high-dimensional dataset.Sources: Barrios et al. (2026); Chen and Li (2023)

Evidence versus interpretation

A design can be informative without being fully causal, but the paper must state what variation identifies, what assumptions remain, and how measurement error changes the estimand. Mechanism language should be proportional to the design.Sources: Choi, Li, and Macciocchi (2026); Chen and Li (2023); Sorkin (2018)

Open research question

Can accounting information improve labor-market matching, or does it mainly reallocate attention and bargaining power across firms and workers? Which designs distinguish those possibilities?Framing readings: Barrios et al. (2026); Sorkin (2018)

Working paper2026

Labor and the Corporate Information Environment

John Manuel Barrios, Jung Ho Choi, Carolyn Deller, Joseph Pacelli, and Heidi A. Packard

Working paper and Labor Life Cycle literature survey · DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.6390718

Setting
A structured survey of research connecting corporate information and rank-and-file labor.
Unit of analysis
Literature-level synthesis organized around stages of the employment relationship.
Observed outcome
Published findings and research-design patterns across the labor life cycle; the survey does not estimate a new firm- or worker-level outcome.
Empirical leverage
The Labor Life Cycle framework separates human-capital development, search and matching, employment, and turnover or retirement.
Identifying comparison or variation
None in the survey itself; it compares constructs, designs, and evidence across prior studies.
Estimand or design target
A conceptual map of how corporate information and labor interact across employment stages, not a causal estimand.
What the evidence supports
Accounting information can be studied as both an input produced by workers and an information source used in labor-market decisions.
Claim boundary
A literature survey organizes evidence; it does not itself identify a causal effect in a new sample.
Published2026

Human Capital Disclosure and Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence from Regulation S-K

Jung Ho Choi, Dan Li, and Daniele Macciocchi

Journal of Accounting Research · 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.
Unit of analysis
Firm job postings, recruitment outcomes, and workforce composition over time.
Observed outcome
Diversity-related posting language, recruitment outcomes, and subsequent workforce-composition measures.
Empirical leverage
A regulation-linked difference-in-differences design and short- versus longer-run outcome timing.
Identifying comparison or variation
Difference-in-differences comparing mandate-exposed public firms with matched private firms before and after the 2020 Regulation S-K change.
Estimand or design target
The differential change associated with disclosure-mandate exposure across short-run recruiting and longer-run workforce outcomes.
What the evidence supports
The mandate is associated with more diversity-related job-posting disclosure and recruitment frictions before later workforce-composition changes emerge.
Claim 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.
Published2016

Do Managers Withhold Good News from Labor Unions?

Richard Chung, Bryan Byung-Hee Lee, Woo-Jong Lee, and Byungcherl Charlie Sohn

Management Science 62(1), 46–68 · DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2014.2075

Setting
South Korean firms with varying union strength and bargaining schedules.
Unit of analysis
Firm disclosure frequency and news timing around labor negotiations.
Observed outcome
The frequency and timing of favorable and unfavorable corporate disclosures around labor negotiations.
Empirical leverage
Variation in union strength, news valence, and bargaining periods.
Identifying comparison or variation
Variation in union strength, news valence, and bargaining periods among South Korean firms.
Estimand or design target
Disclosure responses associated with labor-bargaining incentives in the studied institutional setting.
What the evidence supports
Disclosure timing and frequency can reflect managers’ bargaining incentives toward employees, not only investor information demand.
Claim boundary
The institutional setting and observational design do not establish that the same bargaining response occurs in every country or workforce context.
Published2023

Is Hiring Fast a Good Sign? The Informativeness of Job Vacancy Duration for Future Firm Profitability

Ciao-Wei Chen and Laura Yue Li

Review of Accounting Studies 28, 1316–1353 · DOI: 10.1007/s11142-023-09797-2

Setting
Online job vacancies whose posting and removal dates permit measurement of vacancy duration.
Unit of analysis
Firm-level vacancy duration by job type and subsequent profitability.
Observed outcome
Vacancy duration by job type and subsequent firm profitability.
Empirical leverage
Separating low- and high-skill vacancies to distinguish opportunity-cost and screening interpretations.
Identifying comparison or variation
Differences in vacancy duration and future profitability for low- versus high-skill postings.
Estimand or design target
Skill-specific associations between vacancy duration and future profitability, explicitly not a clean causal hiring effect.
What the evidence supports
Vacancy duration contains different information for low- versus high-skill hiring and is associated with future profitability.
Claim 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.
Published2018

Ranking Firms Using Revealed Preference

Isaac Sorkin

The Quarterly Journal of Economics 133(3), 1331–1393 · DOI: 10.1093/qje/qjy001

Setting
U.S. administrative employer-to-employer worker transitions.
Unit of analysis
Worker flows among firms and the network structure of employer choices.
Observed outcome
Directed employer-to-employer worker flows and the resulting ranking of firms.
Empirical leverage
A revealed-preference ranking from directed worker flows, with controls for layoffs and recruiting intensity.
Identifying comparison or variation
The network of worker transitions across firms, with adjustments for layoffs and recruiting intensity.
Estimand or design target
A revealed-preference ranking of firm desirability under the model’s opportunity-set and preference assumptions.
What the evidence supports
Worker transition networks contain information about firm desirability and nonwage amenities that wage levels alone do not capture.
Claim boundary
The ranking is not an accounting-disclosure effect and requires assumptions linking observed moves to worker preferences and available opportunities.
Published2023

Topic Modeling of 8-K Filings for Prediction of Market Reactions to Corporate Layoffs and Other Exit/Disposal Activities

Charles P. Cullinan, Richard Holowczak, David Louton, and Hakan Saraoglu

Intelligent Systems in Accounting, Finance and Management 30(4), 173–191 · 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.
Unit of analysis
Exit- or disposal-event 8-K filing and its announcement-window market reaction.
Observed outcome
Text-derived event topics and stock-market reactions to different types of Item 2.05 exit or disposal disclosures.
Empirical leverage
Topic modeling separates heterogeneous Item 2.05 events and compares announcement reactions across topics and the presence of a broader strategic initiative.
Identifying comparison or variation
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.
Estimand or design target
Differences in announcement-window market reactions across disclosed exit or disposal event types and strategic framing.
What the evidence supports
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.
Claim boundary
Topic classifications and market reactions do not establish managers’ true layoff motives, realized separation counts, disclosure completeness, or causal operating consequences.
Concept checks

Match the claim to the design

These checks emphasize outcome definitions, measurement validity, and interpretation boundaries rather than memorizing paper titles.

1. A paper observes a spike in employer-specific job searches after an earnings announcement. Which claim is best supported?
Select one response.
2. A regulation changes the wording of job postings. What must be measured before claiming improved human-capital acquisition?
Select one response.
3. A firm’s workforce disclosure exceeds an employee-history measure. Which statement respects the claim boundary?
Select one response.
4. A topic-classified workforce-reduction 8-K receives a negative announcement-window return. Which interpretation stays within the design?
Select one response.
5. Why should researchers hesitate to treat posting removal as a completed hire?
Select one response.
6. What is the strongest order for a new labor-accounting project?
Select one response.
Assessment

Research-design memo: a labor-market consequence of accounting information

In 1,200–1,500 words, propose one study in which an accounting disclosure, reporting property, or reporting regulation plausibly affects workers, applicants, or human-capital acquisition. The memo must define the decision stage and distinguish the observed outcome from the broader mechanism.

Required memo sections

  1. Question, economic tension, and why the problem is accounting rather than generic personnel economics
  2. Treatment or information event, unit of analysis, timing, and estimand
  3. Counterfactual and identification assumptions
  4. Primary labor outcome and why it matches the decision stage
  5. Data construction, deduplication, coverage, linkage, and validation
  6. Two competing mechanisms and at least one discriminating test
  7. Claim boundary: one conclusion the design can support and one it cannot

Illustrative outline

  1. Question: Does a mandated workforce disclosure change applicant sorting toward firms with verifiably stronger employment practices?
  2. Treatment: differential mandate exposure with pre-specified event time and an untreated comparison group.
  3. Outcomes: applicant mix and completed hires—not posting text alone.
  4. Validation: reconcile platform applications with a second hiring or employee-entry source for a labeled subsample.
  5. Mechanisms: information provision versus impression management; distinguish using disclosure–outcome consistency and prior information frictions.
  6. Boundary: estimate sorting among observed platform users, not national welfare or unobserved applicant quality.

Common design errors

  • Calling any posting change ‘human-capital acquisition’ without observing applications or hires.
  • Treating professional-profile coverage as a census of employment.
  • Using post-treatment controls that absorb the mechanism of interest.
  • Interpreting a null average effect as proof that no subgroup or margin responds.
  • Presenting a mechanism as established when the test only shows consistency.
Research-design memo grading rubric
CriterionPointsFull-credit standard
Accounting contribution20The question depends on reporting, disclosure, assurance, or accounting regulation.
Construct and unit alignment20Treatment, decision stage, unit, timing, and outcome describe the same empirical object.
Identification25The counterfactual is explicit; assumptions and threats are confronted rather than hidden.
Measurement and validation20Coverage, duplicates, linkage, proxies, and missingness receive concrete tests.
Interpretation discipline15Evidence, mechanisms, and unsupported claims are clearly separated.
Total100Evidence and interpretation remain aligned throughout the memo.
Provenance

Reading list and source records

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. Working-paper status and bibliographic details should be rechecked before assigning a future class because publication records can change.

Seminar reading list

A printable map of the six sections, evidence statements, limitations, and assignment rubric. This PDF is a print adjunct and is not a tagged PDF; the complete module above is the Accessible HTML version.

Download PDF

Machine-readable manifests

Public source metadata and an explicit media-status record for reproducible provenance checks.

Source JSONMedia JSON
Labor-accounting reading manifest
ReadingStatusObserved outcomeIdentifying comparison / targetClaim boundarySource record
Labor and the Corporate Information EnvironmentBarrios et al. (2026)Working paper
Working paper and Labor Life Cycle literature survey		Published findings and research-design patterns across the labor life cycle; the survey does not estimate a new firm- or worker-level outcome.Comparison: None in the survey itself; it compares constructs, designs, and evidence across prior studies.
Target: A conceptual map of how corporate information and labor interact across employment stages, not a causal estimand.		A literature survey organizes evidence; it does not itself identify a causal effect in a new sample.Publisher / author record
DOI 10.2139/ssrn.6390718
Financial Reporting Quality and Wage Differentials: Evidence from Worker-Level DataChoi, Gipper, and Malik (2023)Published
Journal of Accounting Research 61(4), 1109–1158		Worker wages, wage differentials across employers, and wage changes around worker moves.Comparison: Within-worker and switcher comparisons, structural decomposition, and reporting-quality settings involving Arthur Andersen clients and internal-control weakness announcements.
Target: The wage differential associated with employer financial-reporting quality and the compensation workers receive for reporting-related employment risk.		The paper does not imply that every reporting-quality proxy is exogenous or that all wage differences reflect a single mechanism.Publisher / author record
DOI 10.1111/1475-679X.12477
Financial Reporting and Employee Job SearchdeHaan, Li, and Zhou (2023)Published
Journal of Accounting Research 61(2), 571–617		Current employees’ employer-specific external job-search activity around earnings announcements.Comparison: Within-employer high-frequency search around announcement timing, earnings news, worker mobility, and information-friction heterogeneity.
Target: The announcement-window change in observed search activity, not completed applications, offers, departures, or realized turnover.		Search activity is not the same as a completed application, offer, departure, or causal estimate of realized turnover.Publisher / author record
DOI 10.1111/1475-679X.12469
Not Just for Investors: The Role of Earnings Announcements in Guiding Job SeekersChoi, Choi, and Malik (2023)Published
Journal of Accounting and Economics 76(1), 101588		Prospective employees’ firm-specific search activity and survey-reported willingness to apply.Comparison: Search around prospective employers’ earnings announcements plus experimental variation in employer financial-performance information in the survey.
Target: Attention and application-propensity responses to employer financial information, not realized hiring or worker productivity.		The primary search measure does not observe all applications or hires, and announcement timing and information bundles limit causal interpretation of the observational tests.Publisher / author record
DOI 10.1016/j.jacceco.2023.101588
Do Jobseekers Value Diversity Information? Evidence from a Field Experiment and Human Capital DisclosuresChoi et al. (2023)Published
Journal of Accounting Research 61(3), 695–735		Clicks on recommended jobs and related search choices when workforce-diversity information is made salient.Comparison: Random assignment of diversity-information salience in job-recommendation emails, supplemented by archival disclosure analyses.
Target: The intention-to-treat effect of information salience on revealed search choice, not completed applications, offers, or hires.		Clicks do not establish completed applications, offers, hires, wage tradeoffs, or long-run workforce composition.Publisher / author record
DOI 10.1111/1475-679X.12474
Disclosing Labor Demand: Evidence from Online Job PostingsSran (2025)Published
The Accounting Review 100(5), 345–374		Skill detail, contextual specificity, and other disclosure choices in firm job postings.Comparison: Variation associated with the Defend Trade Secrets Act, firms’ secrecy exposure, proprietary costs, and labor-market tightness.
Target: Changes in job-posting disclosure choices attributable to the paper’s policy and cost variation, not realized hiring outcomes.		Posting text does not reveal all internal labor demand, realized hires, worker quality, or downstream productivity.Publisher / author record
DOI 10.2308/TAR-2023-0062
Human Capital Disclosure and Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence from Regulation S-KChoi, Li, and Macciocchi (2026)Published
Journal of Accounting Research		Diversity-related posting language, recruitment outcomes, and subsequent workforce-composition measures.Comparison: Difference-in-differences comparing mandate-exposed public firms with matched private firms before and after the 2020 Regulation S-K change.
Target: The differential change associated with disclosure-mandate exposure across short-run recruiting and longer-run workforce outcomes.		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.Publisher / author record
DOI 10.1111/1475-679X.70036
Diversity WashingBaker et al. (2024)Published
Journal of Accounting Research 62(5), 1661–1709		Firm-year gaps between voluntary diversity claims and employee-history-based workforce composition, plus subsequent firm outcomes.Comparison: Cross-sectional and intertemporal variation in disclosure–workforce gaps, textual features, and future outcomes.
Target: Associations between larger disclosure–workforce gaps and credibility-related indicators, not managers’ unobserved intent.		A measured gap does not directly reveal managers’ subjective intent, and employee-history data have coverage and classification limitations.Publisher / author record
DOI 10.1111/1475-679X.12542
Do Managers Withhold Good News from Labor Unions?Chung et al. (2016)Published
Management Science 62(1), 46–68		The frequency and timing of favorable and unfavorable corporate disclosures around labor negotiations.Comparison: Variation in union strength, news valence, and bargaining periods among South Korean firms.
Target: Disclosure responses associated with labor-bargaining incentives in the studied institutional setting.		The institutional setting and observational design do not establish that the same bargaining response occurs in every country or workforce context.Publisher / author record
DOI 10.1287/mnsc.2014.2075
Boarding a Sinking Ship? An Investigation of Job Applications to Distressed FirmsBrown and Matsa (2016)Published
The Journal of Finance 71(2), 507–550		The quantity and quality of applications to large financial firms during the Great Recession.Comparison: Variation in employer financial distress, unemployment protection, accounting and credit-risk signals, and job requirements.
Target: Applicant responses to employer distress in the crisis-era financial-sector setting.		The crisis-era financial-sector setting does not establish the same magnitude for all industries, periods, or types of workforce news.Publisher / author record
DOI 10.1111/jofi.12367
Are Online Job Postings Informative to Investors?Gutiérrez et al. (2020)Published
Management Science 66(7), 3133–3141		Firm-level posting-volume changes, subsequent operations, and investor responses.Comparison: Changes in posting volume, including distinctions between postings more likely to reflect growth and replacement hiring.
Target: The predictive association between posting-volume changes and future firm outcomes, not the causal effect of hiring.		Posting counts alone do not identify occupation, skill, location, posting intent, vacancy fulfillment, or causal hiring effects.Publisher / author record
DOI 10.1287/mnsc.2019.3450
Is Hiring Fast a Good Sign? The Informativeness of Job Vacancy Duration for Future Firm ProfitabilityChen and Li (2023)Published
Review of Accounting Studies 28, 1316–1353		Vacancy duration by job type and subsequent firm profitability.Comparison: Differences in vacancy duration and future profitability for low- versus high-skill postings.
Target: Skill-specific associations between vacancy duration and future profitability, explicitly not a clean causal hiring effect.		Posting disappearance is an imperfect proxy for hiring, and the paper explicitly treats the central profitability relations as associations rather than clean causal effects.Publisher / author record
DOI 10.1007/s11142-023-09797-2
Ranking Firms Using Revealed PreferenceSorkin (2018)Published
The Quarterly Journal of Economics 133(3), 1331–1393		Directed employer-to-employer worker flows and the resulting ranking of firms.Comparison: The network of worker transitions across firms, with adjustments for layoffs and recruiting intensity.
Target: A revealed-preference ranking of firm desirability under the model’s opportunity-set and preference assumptions.		The ranking is not an accounting-disclosure effect and requires assumptions linking observed moves to worker preferences and available opportunities.Publisher / author record
DOI 10.1093/qje/qjy001
Topic Modeling of 8-K Filings for Prediction of Market Reactions to Corporate Layoffs and Other Exit/Disposal ActivitiesCullinan et al. (2023)Published
Intelligent Systems in Accounting, Finance and Management 30(4), 173–191		Text-derived event topics and stock-market reactions to different types of Item 2.05 exit or disposal disclosures.Comparison: 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.
Target: Differences in announcement-window market reactions across disclosed exit or disposal event types and strategic framing.		Topic classifications and market reactions do not establish managers’ true layoff motives, realized separation counts, disclosure completeness, or causal operating consequences.Publisher / author record
DOI 10.1002/isaf.1545