Professor Matthias Breuer receives the Best Conference Paper Award of the VHB Annual Meeting 2022 (German Association for Business Research)

The award recognizes Professor Breuer's conference submission, entitled "Uneven Regulation and Economic Reallocation: Evidence from Transparency Regulation," which is co-authored with Patricia Breuer (University of Mannheim).  Their paper examines the consequences of uneven financial-reporting requirements on the location of economic activity in Europe.  It shows that European countries and industries with looser reporting requirements gain at the expense of countries and industries with stricter reporting requirements.  This reallocation away from regulated toward unregulated markets appears to occur because regulated firms incur proprietary costs of reporting, whereas unregulated firms (e.g., foreign competitors) benefit from regulated firms' reporting through information spillovers (e.g., learning about profitable markets).  The reallocation can incentivize regulators to choose lower transparency standards, fueling in a race to the bottom. Hence, the paper suggests that regulatory coordination may be called for to ensure a minimum level of corporate transparency in Europe and other countries.