Executives with poor prior performance may be inclined to take excessive risk in the hope of meeting performance targets, in which case a compensation contract featuring severance pay can be optimal. While prior work has shown that severance can induce managers to take positive NPV risks, we...

This study finds that more conservative earnings have lower information content in that higher conditional conservatism decreases the speed with which equity investor disagreement and uncertainty resolve at earnings announcements. We find that a firm-year measure of conditional conservatism we...

This study documents a six-fold increase in short-term return reversals during earnings announcements relative to non-announcement periods. Following prior research, we use reversals as a proxy for expected returns market makers demand for providing liquidity. Our findings highlight significant...

Executives with poor prior performance may be inclined to take excessive risk in the hope of meeting performance targets, in which case a compensation contract featuring severance pay can be optimal. While prior work has shown that severance can induce managers to take positive NPV risks, we...

This paper attempts to document the effects of accounting flexibility on managers' propensity to cut Ramp;D expenditures. Using Barton and Simko's (2002) NOA/Sales variable as a proxy for accounting flexibility, we find that managers are more (less) likely to cut Ramp;D when accounting...

Executives who own a stake in the firm that they manage tend to be under-diversified and therefore have an incentive to take real actions to smooth earnings. Using a simple principal-agent model, we show that management will use variable pay to transfer risk to employees. The variability of pay...

To examine the effect of foreign direct investment, this paper compares the post-acquisition performance changes of foreign- and domestic-acquired firms in China. Unlike previous studies, we investigate the purified effect of foreign ownership by using domestic-acquired firms as the control...

Non-isothermal crystallization of aqueous nanofluids in the presence of two types of high aspect-ratio carbon nano-additives, i.e., carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs), was characterized by means of differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). A parametric investigation was...

China implemented a package of policies during the 11th Five-Year Plan (2006–2010) to improve industrial energy efficiency. This assessment provides a methodology that establishes a causal relationship between policy implementation and energy conservation effects. To enhance the confidence in...

In this study, a novel dual-nozzle ejector enhanced vapor-compression cycle (DEVC) for solar assisted air-source heat pump systems is proposed. In DEVC, the use of the dual-nozzle ejector for recovering the expansion losses is a very promising approach to improve the cycle performance. A...