We examine whether chief financial officers (CFOs) with accounting backgrounds (accountant CFOs) are associated with more conservative corporate outcomes. We find that, in high-growth industries, firms with accountant CFOs invest less in research and development and capital expenditures and are...

This paper examines how constraints on firms' financing capacity relate to managers' discretionary accounting choices. Three hypotheses of earnings management — the opportunism hypothesis, the rational expectations hypothesis, and the signaling hypothesis — predict that constrained firms...

The value relevance of financial statements is of great significance to investors and standard setters. The present research examines whether accounting comparability among industry peers enhances the value relevance of earnings and book value. This is an important question because both the...