We study CEO successions to investigate the factors that lead a firm to select an individual with CFO experience for their CEO and whether appointing a former CFO leads to systematic changes in financial reporting, disclosure, and tax policies relative to other CEO appointments. Consistent with...

Using a sample of earnings restatements, we provide evidence that an empirical measure of the comparability in two firms' earnings (“earnings comparability”) captures the extent to which a firm's accounting choices and estimates are similar to those of its restating peer firm. We then...

We argue that a firm’s suppliers and customers prefer it to account more conservatively due to information asymmetry and these stakeholders’ asymmetric payoffs with respect to the firm’s performance. We predict that a firm meets this demand for accounting conservatism when suppliers or...