Investors, regulators, academics, and researchers all emphasize the importance of financial statement comparability. However, an empirical construct of comparability is typically not specified. In addition, little evidence exists on the benefits of comparability to users. This study attempts to...

Current research shows that firms are more likely to benchmark against peers that pay their Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) higher compensation, reflecting self-serving behavior. We propose an alternative explanation: the choice of highly paid peers represents a reward for unobserved CEO talent....

We investigate a sample of 50 firm-events, identified in the "Global Research Analysts Settlement", in which analysts were discovered to have acted misleadingly ex post. In this setting, analysts' incentives caused them to issue public disclosures that differed from their private beliefs. We...

We investigate a sample of 50 firm events, identified in the Global Research Analysts Settlement, in which analysts were discovered to have acted misleadingly ex-post. In this setting, analysts' incentives caused them to issue public disclosures that differed from their private beliefs. We...

We evaluate an industry disclosure initiative designed to inform investors, the practice of providing information regarding investment professionals' backgrounds. Implicit in the motivation for this initiative is the presumed relevance of background information to investors seeking investment...

Prior studies have documented the asymmetrical behavior of selling, general and administrative (SGamp;A) costs (i.e., SGamp;A costs increase more when activity rises than they decrease when activity falls), and have explained this phenomenon primarily with economic factors. Drawing on agency...

<heading id="h1" level="1" implicit="yes" format="display">ABSTRACT</heading>This study uses a large sample of sell-side bond analysts' reports to examine the properties of recommendations provided by bond analysts and the impact of these recommendations on bond securities. First, we document that the distribution of bond analysts' buy, hold, and sell...

This article provides evidence about the wealth change and redistribution effects of Section 404 of Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), which requires that management assess and publicly report on the effectiveness of their firm's internal controls, and that auditors publicly provide an opinion on...