We document widespread adoption of adjustments to earnings for performance evaluation; 84% of our sample of S&P 1500 firms use adjusted earnings for bonus compensation. We find that the transactions removed from adjusted earnings vary widely and include both transitory and non-transitory items....

This study investigates the effect of real earnings management on two important aspects of earnings quality: earnings persistence and its informativeness about future cash flows. I focus on real earnings management through the abnormal reduction in discretionary expenditures and investigate how...

Beatty, Liao, and Wu (2013) document that financial misreporting by prominent firms distorts peer firms' capital investment decisions. Using a large sample of firms subject to SEC and DOJ enforcement actions for accounting misstatements, I establish three important generalizations. First, the...

I investigate how top management cohesiveness/bonding affects firms' financial reporting risk. I operationalize team cohesiveness/bonding by measuring the social connections among the top executives of firms through four types of social networks: educational background, employment history,...