Survey evidence reveals that managers prefer to avoid dilution of earnings per share (EPS), though financial theory suggests it is irrelevant in firm valuation. We explore contracting and behavioral explanations for this apparent paradox using a large sample of debt-equity issuers. We first...

Recent research shows that matching between contemporaneous revenues and expenses has declined over the past 40 years. We argue that this decline in matching reduces the contracting usefulness of earnings and affects managerial effort allocation and performance measure choice. Based on a...

Prior research shows that SEC comment letters provide useful information to outsiders of the firm. However, whether insiders such as boards of directors use SEC comment letters for the purpose of internal performance evaluation has not been studied. We find that firms reduce CEO annual bonuses...

Combining survey data with real-market data, this research investigates brand awareness from three perspectives. Firstly, this study examines the relation between brand awareness and market outcome. Secondly, it explores the relation between brand awareness and brand equity. Thirdly, the study...

This research assesses visitor satisfaction with the core and secondary attributes of a tourist destination, using two conventional methods, stated and derived importance. The article shows the importance of core attributes are recoverable equally well, regardless of the method. Importances of...

In this paper we investigate how incentives affect managers’ input resource expenditure decisions and how firms make equity grant decisions considering managerial behavior. Focusing on selling, general and administrative (SG&A) expenditure, we first document that SG&A expenditure creates...

This study focuses on the relation between current compensation and past performance measures as signals of a CEO’s ability. We develop a simple two-period principal-agent model with moral hazard and adverse selection and test theoretical predictions using CEO compensation data from 1993-2006....

We examine the information role of accounting disclosures on warranties, utilizing a database that became available due to the requirements of FIN 45. First, because firms use warranty policies as a business strategy to promote their products, a warranty reserve can serve two roles: an...

This paper provides evidence on the characteristics of firms that include pro forma earnings information in their press releases and on whether the usefulness of pro forma earnings to investors varies systematically with these characteristics. Using a sample of 249 press releases from 1997-99,...

This paper examines accounting and non-accounting factors behind accounting losses over a fifty-year period. Using multivariate time-series analysis, we report evidence that the annual percentage of losses for U.S. firms is significantly related to accounting conservatism, Compustat coverage of...