When the Revelation Principle (RP) holds, managing earnings confers no advantage over revelation. We construct an explanation for earnings management that is based on limitations on owners? ability to make commitments (a violation of the RP?s assumptions). Traditionally, earnings management is...

It is often noted that accounting information, while faithfully estimating current profitability, fails to reflect forward-looking information about new ventures. Stock prices, however, reflect the prevailing sentiment about both current and future activities. As a result, though accounting is...

When a firm's input supplier can acquire private information to gain an edge in negotiations, we show that the firm can blunt the supplier's informational advantage by permitting cost inefficiencies in internal production. Specifically, we establish that a modest increase in the cost of the...

Recognizing the role and value of diverse stakeholders, firms pursing a "beyond profit" agenda are becoming increasingly common. This paper studies such hybrid entities - firms that value the profits they create as well as the surpluses generated for consumers - and details their implications...

Corporate insiders face substantial restrictions on stock sales, but many have viewed receiving tax deductions from charitable donations of stock holdings as an attractive alternative. In fact, empirical evidence consistently indicates that executives even make use of their private information...

A manager’s short-term focus (myopia) is typically viewed as detrimental to the firm’s interests. In contrast, studying a voluntary disclosure model wherein both capital market and product market strategic considerations are in play, this paper shows that the manager’s myopic behavior can...

The International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) recently issued a joint exposure draft on accounting for leases. This exposure draft seeks to shift lease accounting from an “ownership” model to a “right-to-use” model. Under the...

We report on a panel discussion at the 2001 CMU Accounting Mini-conference under the title "Intellectual Foundations of Accounting." We provide a background and the motivation for the discussion and present the remarks by the four panelists. A number of perspectives are taken. Sunder emphasizes...

We study the intertemporal properties of accounting conservatism with a focus on managerial incentives. In our main model, conservatism results in smaller expected payouts to the manager (agent) in early periods and larger expected payouts in later periods. Conservatism shifts (ambiguous)...