IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/reaccs/v30y2025i4d10.1007_s11142-025-09891-7.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Legislators’ demand for firms’ financial statements: evidence from U.S. congressional redistricting events

Author

Listed:
  • Matthew Ma

    (Rutgers University)

  • Jing Pan

    (Pennsylvania State University)

  • Ethan Rouen

    (Harvard University)

  • Laura Wellman

    (University of Oregon)

Abstract

We investigate whether U.S. House representatives and their staff seek financial information from constituent firms to inform their legislative decisions. We exploit shifts in U.S. congressional districts (i.e., the reconfiguration of federal district lines or redistricting) that introduce new constituent firms to legislators’ districts. To the extent that legislators and their staff collect and rely on firms’ financial statement information, we expect that a change in representation as a result of redistricting will result in a significant and observable change in searches for information about new constituent firms. Our evidence supports this prediction. We also find that the timing of searching coincides with legislators’ roll call votes, particularly ahead of more controversial bills and for bills lobbied by sample firms. Finally, we find that new constituent firms respond to increased information demands after a redistricting event by supplying more policy-relevant disclosures and increasing lobbying.

Suggested Citation

  • Matthew Ma & Jing Pan & Ethan Rouen & Laura Wellman, 2025. "Legislators’ demand for firms’ financial statements: evidence from U.S. congressional redistricting events," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 30(4), pages 3815-3856, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:reaccs:v:30:y:2025:i:4:d:10.1007_s11142-025-09891-7
    DOI: 10.1007/s11142-025-09891-7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11142-025-09891-7
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11142-025-09891-7?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D80 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - General
    • E61 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Policy Objectives; Policy Designs and Consistency; Policy Coordination

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:reaccs:v:30:y:2025:i:4:d:10.1007_s11142-025-09891-7. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.