Following the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, self-regulated peer reviews at accounting firms were replaced by independent inspections conducted by the Public Company Accounting and Oversight Board. Critics of self-regulation had argued that the peer review program lacked credibility. This paper tests...

We test the implications of anchoring bias associated with forecast earnings per share (FEPS) for forecast errors, earnings surprises, stock returns, and stock splits. We find that analysts make optimistic (pessimistic) forecasts when a firm’s FEPS is lower (higher) than the industry median....

type="main" <title type="main">ABSTRACT</title> <p>We posit that management forecasts, which are predictable transformations of realized earnings without random errors, are more informative than unbiased forecasts, which manifest small but unpredictable errors, even if biased forecasts are less accurate. Consistent with this...</p>

We examine how corporate culture influences firm behavior. Prior research suggests a link between individual religiosity and risk aversion. We find that this relationship also influences organizational behavior. Firms located in counties with higher levels of religiosity display lower degrees of...

Prior evidence that higher-quality financial reporting improves capital investment efficiency leaves unaddressed whether it reduces over- or under-investment. This study provides evidence of both in documenting a conditional negative (positive) association between financial reporting quality and...