We study a firm's decisions to engage in socially responsible activities, voluntarily report on them and purchase external assurance of the report. In our signaling model, neither firm type nor the level of activity is observed. We show that if voluntary assurance is not too expensive, the firm...

Public information that becomes available after a manager’s initial voluntary disclosure decision creates incentives for her to reconsider and possibly change that decision. We show that if she has private information that is value relevant or that impacts the firms ability to compete in its...

Using a Verrecchia [1983]-type model, we study the optimal voluntary disclosure strategy of a manager with private information that helps the market interpret financial information the firm is required to report. In equilibrium, the manager's disclosure strategy enhances upward or mitigates...

We reexamine the descriptive ability of the conventional wisdom that earnings announcements made after trading and on Friday are dominated by bad news in light of the 24/7 media coverage and other technological changes of the 1990s. We find that the change in media coverage has facilitated a...

We examine the impact of Regulation Fair Disclosure on the competitive advantage of All-Star analysts as measured by turnover in the rankings. Institutional Investor All-Americans, chosen by votes of institutional investors based on overall helpfulness, experienced a significant increase in...

We ask whether the private debt contracts of family firms contain more restrictive covenants tied to accounting numbers than those of non-family firms. Our examination of Dealscan data indicates that Samp;P 500 family firms are more likely to include accounting-based covenants that limit the...

We examine how biased financial reports (managed earnings) affect how firms compete in the product market and how product market competition affects incentives to bias reported earnings. We find that Cournot competitors bias their financial reports so as to create the impression that their costs...