In this study, we build a novel comprehensive dataset of 123,545 product trademark registrations by S&P 1500 firms to capture firm-level product development. We provide evidence that new product development contains valuable information about future firm fundamentals and predicts increases in...

We test whether earnings management (like a virus) spreads from firm to firm via board connections of shared directors (virus carriers). We use earnings restatements to identify firms that managed earnings and to identify the period when these firms manipulated earnings. We consider firms as...

Using options- and press-based proxies for CEO overconfidence (Malmendier and Tate 2005a, 2005b, 2008), we find that over the 1993-2003 period, firms with overconfident CEOs have greater return volatility, invest more in innovation, obtain more patents and patent citations, and achieve greater...

We study how institutional investor attention to a firm affects the timeliness of analysts' forecasts for that firm. We measure abnormal institutional attention (AIA) using Bloomberg news search activity for the firm on earnings announcement days. We find that analysts issue more timely...

I describe a brief summary of the development of databases used in accounting research and discuss the research questions addressed in traditional databases and ‘new' databases. The new data include online searches such as Google Trends data; textual data from corporate disclosures, analyst...

We propose that when firm agents, such as managers and employees, perceive the board to have congruent values about ESG activities with them, then they are more willing to commit their human capital and effort to the ESG activities to increase firm value. Potentially positive NPV ESG projects...

We offer here the psychological attraction approach to accounting and disclosure rules, regulation, and policy as a program for positive accounting research. We suggest that psychological forces have shaped and continue to shape rules and policies in two different ways. (1) Good Rules for Bad...

We test for the effect of limited attention on the valuation of accruals by comparing the immediate and long-term market reactions to earnings announcements between a subsample of firms that disclose only the balance sheet with a subsample of firms that disclose both the balance sheet and the...