This paper reassesses evidence of anticipatory income smoothing reported in DeFond and Park (1997) in light of knowledge about the shortcomings in the model used to identify the managed component of reported earnings. Our tests demonstrate that the empirical results reported in DeFond and Park...

This paper re-evaluates evidence in Ayers and Freeman [Ayers, F., Freeman, R., 1997. Market assessment of industry and firm earnings information. Journal of Accounting and Economics 24, 205-218] suggesting that investors anticipate industry-wide components of earnings earlier than firm-specific...

We examine whether the recent public outcry over executive compensation has had an impact on the level of executive compensation and/or the sensitivity of cash compensation to firm performance. Cross-sectional analyses for a sample of 186 firms show that post-1993 compensation levels have risen...

Recent accounting and finance literature has introduced the term returns synchronicity, the relation of firm-specific returns to market-wide and industry-wide returns. This paper evaluates the power of fundamental synchronicity, proxied by financial accounting performance measures, to explain...

We examine how firms exercise reporting discretion when preparing the performance graph required under the SEC's new compensation disclosure rules. Results from a sample of 449 Samp;P 500 firms, 31.4% of whom self-constructed a peer group, indicate that three sets of factors -- the firm's...