Corporate Crime Reporter: Jonas Heese on the Effects of Local Newspaper Closures on Corporate Misconduct
“Are local newspapers an effective monitor of corporate misconduct?
Harvard Business School’s Jonas Heese and his colleagues looked at the effects of local newspaper closures on violations by local facilities of publicly listed firms.
They found that after a local newspaper closure, local facilities increased violations by 1.1% and penalties by 15.2%.
This effect was not driven by the underlying economic conditions, the underlying local fraud environment, or the underlying firm conditions.
The authors found that local newspapers are an important monitor of firms’ misconduct.
The paper, titled — When the local newspaper leaves town – The effects of local newspaper closures on corporate misconduct was published in August 2022 in the Journal of Financial Economics.”
Read the full story at Corporate Crime Reporter.
And don’t miss our conversation with Heese about he and his colleagues’ findings.
5 Questions with Jonas Heese: When Newspapers Close, Corporate Misonduct Goes Up