This paper examines whether stock option grants explain missed earnings targets, including reported losses, earnings declines and missed analysts' forecasts. Anecdotal evidence and surveys suggest that managers believe that missing an earnings target can cause stock-price drops (Graham, et al....

This paper presents a theory and empirical evidence that investigate the effects of poor matching on the properties of accounting earnings. The key intuition of this theory is that poor matching manifests as noise in the economic relation between revenues and expenses. As a result, poor matching...

We study the economic determinants of the information externality suppliers experience at the time of their customers' quarterly earnings announcements (QEAs). We measure the information externality as suppliers' stock price reaction to their customers' QEAs. We expect information externalities...

Internal control regulation effectiveness remains controversial given the recent financial crisis. To address this issue we examine the financial reporting effects of the Federal Depository Insurance Corporation Improvement Act (FDICIA) internal control provisions. Exemptions from these...

This paper identifies a distinct immediate announcement period negative relation between earnings announcement surprises and aggregate market returns. Such a relation implies that market participants use earnings information in forming expectations about expected aggregate discount rates and,...

We examine recent confrontational shareholder activism campaigns by hedge funds and by other private investors. The three main parallels between the groups are a significantly positive market reaction for the target firm around the initial Schedule 13D filing date, a further significant increase...

This study examines the selection of financial ratio covenants in debt contracts. Expanding on existing theory and evidence, I predict that loan contracts will include covenants with ratios that are informative of credit risk based on borrower or contract characteristics. The results support...

Several recent papers assume that private information (PIN), proposed by Easley and O'Hara (2002, 2004), is a priced risk factor. We investigate the properties of the PIN factor and find that although PIN characteristics predict future returns only for small firms, the average PIN factor loading...

We investigate the monitoring role performed by institutional investors in corporate restructurings. We hypothesize that institutional monitoring will (1) influence a firm's decision to restructure and (2) encourage restructurings that stop poor performance before it becomes too severe (i.e....

We model and estimate analysts' herding propensity with I/B/E/S annual earnings forecast data. Compared to prior studies, our paper has three unique features. First, we estimate analysts' true posterior beliefs of a firm's earnings assuming rational expectations rather than using analysts' own...