We show that, contrary to popular belief, initial public offering (IPO) firms report more conservatively. We attribute this to the higher quality reporting demanded of public firms by financial statement users and consequentially higher monitoring by auditors, boards, analysts, rating agencies,...

We examine the “confirmation” hypothesis that audited financial reporting and disclosure of managers' private information are complements, because independent verification of outcomes disciplines and hence enhances disclosure credibility. Committing to higher audit fees (a measure of...

<heading id="h1" level="1" implicit="yes" format="display">ABSTRACT</heading>We quantify the relative importance of earnings announcements in providing new information to the share market, using the "R"-super-2 in a regression of securities' calendar-year returns on their four quarterly earnings-announcement "window" returns. The "R"-super-2, which averages...

We investigate the role of accrual accounting in the asymmetrically timely recognition (incorporation in reported earnings) of gains and losses. Timely recognition requires accruals when it precedes complete realization of the gains and losses in cash. We show that nonlinear accruals models...

This study compares the speed of price adjustments to seasoned equity offering announcements by NYSE/AMEX and Nasdaq stocks. We find that price adjustments are quicker by as much as one hour on Nasdaq. This result is not due to differences in issuer characteristics or announcement effects across...

In this paper, we analyse cross-sectional heterogeneity in the time-series variation of liquidity in equity markets. Our analysis uses a broad time-series and cross-section of liquidity data. We find that average daily changes in liquidity exhibit significant heterogeneity in the cross-section;...