research
2025
- working paperTechnology - Enabled EnforcementKobilov Botir2025Solo-authored dissertation. Preparing for resubmission
This paper leverages a unique setting and a comprehensive administrative database to evaluate the effectiveness of policy interventions aimed at digitizing transactions, reducing informality, and addressing underreported business income in a developing country. I find that the mandatory adoption of technology, which provides regulators with real-time and accurate information on business-to-consumer transactions, increases firms’ revenue reporting compliance by at least 21%. This effect is particularly pronounced among firms more exposed to ex-ante regulatory monitoring and enforcement. Additionally, I investigate a subsequent intervention that established a direct communication channel with citizens through a mobile app, enabling individuals to share information about firms’ compliance with technology usage in exchange for financial rewards from the authorities. My findings indicate that this policy further increased firms’ reported revenues by 38%. Unlike the effects of EFD adoption, the impact of this program is concentrated among firms that were less exposed to ex-ante monitoring and enforcement. Taken together, these findings suggest that regulators can address the oversight gaps caused by limited enforcement resources by leveraging technology and empower citizens as technology-enabled enforcement agents, thereby improving firm-level reporting compliance.
- working paperTo the Moon or Bust: Do Retail Investors Profit from Social Media Induced Trading?Kobilov Botir and Eliner Liran2025
“Best paper written by a PhD student” award winner by UC San Diego’s Brandes Center. Co-winner of grand total $25,000 prize. See more at https://rady.ucsd.edu/why/centers/brandes/news/index.html
By combining data on retail investors’ trading history and stock-specific social media activity, we provide evidence that social media induces retail trading more than other known attention-grabbing factors and is detrimental to investor performance. Specifically, we find retail investors lose, on average 2.2%, at both the transaction and portfolio levels from trades placed on days when a stock has abnormally high levels of discussions on social media. We attribute the underperformance to market timing and the disposition effect. These findings are crucial in the context of heightened discourse on the impact of social media on financial markets