SOX Section 404 and Corporate Innovation
利用准自然实验，发现《萨班斯-奥克斯利法案》第404条合规要求导致受影响企业专利数量和引用次数显著下降，且财务约束和诉讼风险高的企业影响更大，表明该法案通过抑制创新带来实际经济成本。
This paper exploits a quasi-natural experiment to investigate the relation between the Sarbanes–Oxley Act (SOX) of 2002 and corporate innovation: firms with a public float under $75 million can delay compliance with Section 404 of the act. We find a significant decrease in the number of patents and patent citations for firms that are subject to Section 404 compliance relative to firms that are not. This relation is more pronounced when firms are financially constrained and when firms face high litigation risk. Overall, our evidence suggests that SOX imparts real costs to the economy by decreasing corporate innovativeness.