Prior research shows that the cash component of earnings is more persistent than the accrual component of earnings. We investigate whether the persistence of the cash component is influenced by management's decision to retain or distribute cash flows. We find that when firms retain the cash...

We examine 2,190 SEC Accounting and Auditing Enforcement Releases (AAERs) issued between 1982 and 2005. We obtain a comprehensive sample of firms that are alleged to have misstated their financial statements. We examine the characteristics of misstating firms along five dimensions: accrual...

We develop a comprehensive and parsimonious measure of corporate financing activities and document a negative relation between this measure and both future stock returns and future profitability. The economic and statistical significance of the results using our comprehensive measure of external...

We develop a comprehensive and parsimonious measure of the extent to which a firm is raising (distributing) capital from (to) capital market participants. We show that the relation between our measure of net external financing and future stock returns is stronger than has been documented in...

This paper extends the work of Sloan (1996) by linking accrual reliability to earnings persistence. We construct a model showing that less reliable accruals lead to lower earnings persistence. We then develop a comprehensive balance sheet categorization of accruals and rate each category...

This paper lays out a decomposition of book-to-price (B/P) that articulates precisely how B/P quot;absorbsquot; leverage. The B/P ratio can be decomposed into an enterprise book-to-price (that pertains to operations and potentially reflects operating risk) and a leverage component (that reflects...

This paper tests the hypothesis that irrational market misvaluation affects firms' takeover behavior. We employ two contemporaneous proxies for market misvaluation, pre-takeover book/price ratios and pre-takeover ratios of residual income model value to price. Misvaluation of bidders and targets...

This paper uses pre-offer market valuations to evaluate the misvaluation and Q theories of takeovers. Bidder and target valuations (price-to-book, or price-to-residual-income-model-value) are related to means of payment, mode of acquisition, premia, target hostility, offer success, and bidder...

We investigate analysts' motives for rounding annual EPS forecasts (placing a zero or five in the penny location of the forecast). We first show that an intuitive reason for analysts to engage in rounding is in circumstances where the penny location of the forecast is of less economic...

We provide evidence that managers use the discretion afforded by fair-value accounting rules to manage the size of reported securitization gains. We show that the ambiguity allowed in discount rate choice is one way that managers can influence these gains. We investigate whether CEO compensation...