The Effect of Financial Resources on Misconduct: Evidence from Lottery Ticket Sales
利用彩票中奖带来的意外财务资源变化，研究发现零售商财务资源增加会减少向未成年人销售烟草，为财务资源与企业不当行为的关系提供了因果证据。
We investigate the influence of financial resources on a firm’s propensity for misconduct. Previous studies offer conflicting predictions regarding the relationship, and much of the empirical evidence suffers from issues like selection, measurement error, reverse causality, and omitted variable bias. Leveraging a difference-in-differences design, we first examine quasirandom fluctuations in retailers’ financial resources resulting from large windfalls from selling winning lottery tickets. Our results suggest that an increase in financial resources from selling a large winning lottery ticket reduces retailers’ tobacco sales to minors. Next, to rule in strain theory and to rule out alternative explanations, we leverage a second natural experiment, heterogeneity analysis, an alternate measure of misconduct, and an online randomized experiment. In doing so, we provide plausibly causal evidence on the relationship between a firm’s financial resources and its propensity for misconduct and provide potentially useful findings for policymakers and regulators. Funding: This work was supported by the Blake Family Fund for Ethics, Leadership, and Governance at Purdue University. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2023.17541 .