Has Section 404 of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act Discouraged Corporate Investment? New Evidence from a Natural Experiment
利用自然实验方法，研究发现萨班斯-奥克斯利法案第404条并未导致小企业投资减少，质疑了该法案抑制大企业投资的普遍看法。
Prior studies conclude that an unintended consequence of firms complying with the Sarbanes–Oxley Act is lower levels of risk-taking activities, including investment. We first show that prior studies cannot isolate the effects of SOX from other contemporaneous events. We then use the implementation requirements of SOX404 to construct a natural experiment that isolates the effects of SOX404 for a sample of small firms. We do not find a reduction in investment and other risk-taking activities for firms that had to comply with SOX404, relative to other firms. Because small firms are expected to be the most adversely affected by the regulation, our results cast doubt on the notion that SOX404 had a negative impact on larger firms. Data and the online appendix are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2018.3090 . This paper was accepted by Suraj Srinivasan, accounting.