Does using earnings management to meet or beat analysts' forecasts decrease the market reward to achieving this target? We use changes in effective tax rates from the third to the fourth quarter to estimate managed earnings, following and extending Dhaliwal, Gleason and Mills (2004). We...

FIN 48, Accounting for Uncertainty in Income Taxes (FASB 2006), requires firms to disclose tax reserves and to record changes in tax reserves at adoption of FIN 48 as cumulative effect adjustments in stockholders' equity. We predict that between the enactment and adoption of FIN 48, relative to...

This paper studies the reliability of mandatory contingent liability disclosure. Contingent liabilities introduce substantial uncertainty about future earnings and the value of the firm, but little public data are available on the demands by external claimants. We use confidential audit...