I examine whether managers use discretion in revenue recognition to avoid three earnings benchmarks. I find that managers use discretion in both accrued revenue (i.e., accounts receivable) and deferred revenue (i.e., advances from customers) to avoid negative earnings surprises, but find little...

We examine the relationship between analyst research and corporate earnings announcements to explore the relative importance of information discovery versus interpretation of previously released information. Using equity market reaction to capture information content, we find that information...

This paper examines the role of earnings quality in the future performance of firms that marginally miss or beat analysts' forecasts. We focus primarily on two groups of firms: those that miss their forecast but appear not to have attempted to exceed it by managing earnings, and those that...

Existing research indicates that firms with high accruals are more likely to experience future earnings problems, but that investors' expectations, as reflected in stock prices, do not appear to anticipate these problems. In this paper, we directly examine the published opinions of two types of...

By analyzing a carefully constructed earnings announcements sample that discloses a 'pro forma' earnings number, Bhattacharya, Black, Christensen, and Larson (2002) contribute to recent research documenting increasing differences between GAAP earnings and alternative earnings definitions...

This study investigates whether market participants perceive pro forma earnings to be more informative and more persistent than standard GAAP operating income by analyzing a sample of 1,149 actual pro forma press releases issued between January 1998 and December 2000. We find that pro forma...

Despite the increased frequency of analyst forecasts during earnings announcements, empirical evidence on the interaction between the information in the earnings announcement and these forecasts is limited. We examine the implications of reinforcing and contradicting analyst forecast revisions...

The aim of this research is to examine the effect of defensive measures (DMs) on earnings management in an owner dominant environment such as Continental Europe, where control is assumed to be exercised by large shareholders. Thus, compared to the manager dominant context of the US/UK, in the...

This paper examines the performance consequences of cutting discretionary expenditures and managing accruals to exceed analyst forecasts. We show that firms that just beat analyst forecasts with low quality earnings exhibit a short-term stock price benefit relative to firms that miss forecasts...

We examine the association between board independence and the characteristics of non-GAAP earnings. Our results suggest that companies with less independent boards are more likely to opportunistically exclude recurring items from non-GAAP earnings. Specifically, we find that exclusions from...