We document strong evidence of a declining relation between R&D and future profitability, which coincides with a number of important economic changes including a significant increase in R&D spending. We identify several contributors to this decline, including changes in the nature and riskiness...

We examine the disclosure of non-GAAP earnings information in quarters containing transitory gains to investigate whether the primary motivation for these managers to disclose non-GAAP earnings is to inform or mislead. In this setting, non-GAAP earnings are more informative than GAAP earnings,...

This paper presents a sales forecasting model and tests the model on a sample of firms in the retail industry. The model distinguishes between sales growth due to an increase in the number of sales-generating units (e.g. opening new stores) and growth due to an increase in the sales rate at the...

We investigate if high-ability managers are more likely to intentionally smooth earnings, a form of earnings management, and when they are more likely to do so. Although prior studies provide evidence that high-ability managers report higher quality earnings, the literature does not indicate...

To inform the debate on the merits of internal control audits, we examine managers' decisions to temporarily exempt newly acquired businesses from Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. We provide evidence that managers are more likely to elect the exemption when expected compliance costs are...

More companies are disclosing free cash flow in their earnings announcements. Companies choose a range of definitions for disclosed free cash flow, none of which correspond to the theoretical definition. The most common definition (in 38% of free cash flow disclosures) is operating cash flow...

In this paper we propose a measure of managerial ability, based on managers' efficiency in generating revenues, which is available for a large sample of firms and outperforms existing ability measures. We find that our measure is strongly associated with manager fixed effects, and that the stock...

We examine the association between board independence and the characteristics of non-GAAP earnings. Our results suggest that companies with less independent boards are more likely to opportunistically exclude recurring items from non-GAAP earnings. Specifically, we find that exclusions from...