We investigate the causes and consequences of changes in option-based compensation for the top five executives around the issuance of SFAS 123R, which requires firms to expense the fair value of their employee stock options (ESOs) on their income statements. We hypothesize that firms with...

Valuation theories predict a negative relation between the earnings-to-price (E/P) ratio and future earnings growth, but prior studies have produced conflicting results. Using a growth measure that incorporates loss firms, this paper shows that the negative relation exists in the long term, but...

This paper examines how governance and regulatory reforms surrounding the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) of 2002 and the Global Settlement (GS) affect the analysts' information environment, specifically the quality of financial analysts' common and private information. Our information quality measures...

Taxes represent a significant cost to the firm and shareholders, and it is generally expected that shareholders prefer tax aggressiveness. However, this argument ignores potential non-tax costs that can accompany tax aggressiveness, especially those arising from agency problems. Firms owned/run...

We compare earnings for the last twelve months ending in quarter four (i.e., fiscal year earnings), three, two and one. Prior literature offers two competing explanations for why fourth quarter earnings exhibit higher volatility than other interim quarters. Under the first explanation, GAAP...

We examine analysts' implied expected rates of return for recent IPO firms relative to more seasoned firms. We document that analysts have relatively more optimistic expectations about recent IPO firms relative to seasoned firms, and these optimistic expectations persist, on average, for four...

Earnings press releases are the primary mechanism by which managers announce quarterly earnings and make other concurrent disclosures to investors and other stakeholders. A largely unexplored element of earnings press releases is the language that managers use throughout the press release, which...

Using a unique database of monthly advertising spending in media outlets, we examine whether managers engage in real earnings management to meet quarterly financial reporting benchmarks. We extend prior literature by: (1) separately analyzing advertising activities, allowing us to explore novel...

This study investigates whether accrual quality, earnings persistence and earnings predictive ability are affected by the adequacy rather than the strength of corporate governance. Under the premise that firms that have consistently outperformed their industry counterparts in the past have less...

This paper examines the source of the documented empirical link between measures of accruals quality and a firm's cost of capital. First, we argue that when regressions include accruals quality and operating volatility as determinants, these highly correlated measures capture different...