We examine in this study the relevance to investors of information on the capitalization of software development costs, as promulgated in 1985 by the Financial Accounting Standards Board in its Statement No. 86 (SFAS 86). We find that software capitalization is value-relevant to investors: The...

This study investigates factors associated with firms' decisions in 2002 and early 2003 to recognize stock-based compensation expense under Statement of Financial Accounting Standards (SFAS) No. 123. We find that the likelihood of SFAS 123 expense recognition is significantly related to the...

The accounting for business combinations has long been one of the most controversial financial reporting issues, generating numerous opinions and interpretations by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), Financial Accounting Standard Board (FASB), Securities and Exchange...

This study investigates the relation between share price and stock-based compensation expense that is disclosed but not recognized under SFAS 123, after controlling for net income, equity book value, and expected earnings growth. Our instrumental variables approach controls for the mechanical...

Using a hand-collected sample of 1,246 failed acquisition offers from 1979 to 2016, we investigate whether acquisition premiums are driven by the market’s revaluation of the target (the information hypothesis) or potential synergies (the synergy hypothesis). Partitioning the sample into...

We assess the impact of the recent financial crisis and government interventions to ameliorate the ensuing recession on corporate bond returns through the lens of bond market reactions to news conveyed by changes in aggregate earnings as a proxy for changes in expected future cash flows and...

This study explores the relationship between changes in managerial risk-taking incentives and adjustments of firms' cost structures, particularly the operating leverage (fixed-to-variable cost ratio). We find managers reduce operating leverage by substituting fixed costs with variable costs,...

Previous research argues that earnings quality, measured as the unsigned abnormal accruals, proxies for information asymmetries that affect cost of capital. We examine this argument directly in two stages. In the first stage, we estimate the firm's exposure to an earnings quality factor in the...

This study investigates factors associated with firms' decisions in 2002 and early 2003 to recognize stock-based compensation expense under Statement of Financial Accounting Standards (SFAS) No. 123. We find that the likelihood of SFAS 123 expense recognition is significantly related to the...

In this paper we investigate the existence and magnitudes of implicit taxes on equity. Specifically, using futures market data to control for risk, we test whether the pre-tax returns on bonds are higher than the pre-tax returns on four stock indices during the period 1993-1999. We compare the...