Capital Markets Regulation and Human Capital Investments: Evidence from SOX and Accounting Major Choice

This paper analyzes the impact of the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act on individuals’ decisions to invest in regulatory human capital. We conjecture that SOX elicits greater student flows into accounting by increasing the expected financial returns to an accounting degree. Exploiting the geographic variation in the SOX-induced growth in the demand for accounting labor and rich survey data on college students, we find that freshmen from commuting zones with greater public company presence exhibit a more marked increase in the propensity to major in accounting after the enactment of SOX. Consistent with the “financial incentives” mechanism, we find that students are more responsive to SOX when they have stronger pecuniary preferences, when they are better positioned to seize the financial rewards for accounting, and when they have better access to information about SOX-induced changes in returns to the accounting major. Finally, regions with greater public company presence exhibit larger increases in local employment in the accounting industry. Our findings shed light on the important link between capital markets regulation intensity and investments in compliance-related human capital.