LOBBYING FOR ACCOUNTING LEGISLATION

I provide the first large-scale evidence on the lobbying forces seeking to deregulate accounting and their consequences using the U.S. congressional archive and lobbying disclosure data. I focus on congressional bills aimed at changing accounting rules (“accounting bills”), which attracted over a billion dollars in lobbying from industries and firms between 1999 and 2022. Notably, 72 percent of the lobbying expenditures are for accounting bills that seek to deregulate (“deregulating bills”). Deregulating bills, when lobbied more, are not more likely to become legislated but are more likely to result in downstream deregulatory actions. When chairs of the congressional committees overseeing accounting regulation receive more campaign financing from lobbying organizations, they are more likely to hear a deregulating bill, and politicians are more likely to vote in favor of it. Furthermore, after lobbying for accounting bills, firms are less likely to face accounting-related regulatory scrutiny from the SEC. These findings are consistent with the special interest theory of regulation.

Grantor dc:publisher

Temple University. Libraries

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Lee, You-Kyung

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Basu, Sudipta, 1965-

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Byzalov, Dmitri
• Gomez, Enrique
• Wang, Wei
• Naveen, Lalitha

• Accounting
• Business administration and accounting

Statement dc:rights

• IN COPYRIGHT- This Rights Statement can be used for an Item that is in copyright. Using this statement implies that the organization making this Item available has determined that the Item is in copyright and either is the rights-holder, has obtained permission from the rights-holder(s) to make their Work(s) available, or makes the Item available under an exception or limitation to copyright (including Fair Use) that entitles it to make the Item available.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Repository record dc:identifier.uri

https://scholarshare.temple.edu/handle/20.500.12613/11253

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarshare.temple.edu:20.500.12613/11253