Exciting news from the 2024 JAE Conference! Last week, Stanford University hosted this year's edition of the prestigious Journal of Accounting & Economics (JAE) conference, where only six papers were selected for presentation. Among them was the paper titled “Cross-border Investment, Deterrence, and Compliance Effects of Ownership Transparency,” co-authored by Harald Amberger (WU Vienna), Jaron Wilde (University of Iowa), and Yuchen Wu (HSG St. Gallen). Jaron Wilde presented the paper, and Thomas Rauter (University of Chicago) provided a highly insightful discussion, placing the study within the broader context of existing evidence and highlighting the implications for ongoing developments in ownership transparency.

Remarkably, the paper was awarded Best Conference Paper—huge congratulations to the entire team on this impressive accomplishment!

About the study: The authors examine the impact of the adoption of beneficial ownership registers in the EU (implemented in Austria through WieReG). Their findings indicate that investment from non-EU financial havens into the EU declines significantly following the adoption of these registers. Public scrutiny and enforcement emerge as key factors shaping this decline. Notably, potentially illicit actors do not appear to alter their investment behavior. Instead, they appear less likely to comply with the transparency regulation. This initial evidence from the EU highlights a troubling policy implication: while beneficial ownership registers seem to affect likely legitimate actors, potentially illicit actors—the intended targets—appear to seek ways to avoid the regulation.