We take up Cochrane's (2011) challenge to identify the firm characteristics that provide independent information about average U.S. monthly stock returns by simultaneously including 94 characteristics in Fama-MacBeth regressions that avoid overweighting microcaps and adjust for data snooping...

This paper examines the role played by internal control and its five components (i.e., control environment, risk assessment, control activities, information and communication, and monitoring) in alleviating future stock price crash risk. Using a unique dataset from China, we find evidence that...

We examine firms' financial reporting practices during the missing months that are induced by fiscal year changes and not covered by regular quarters. We find that firms tend to report much lower income for the missing months than for adjacent quarters, mainly by recording higher operating...

As tax expense reflects value lost to taxes paid, it should be negatively associated with value, provided non-tax, value-relevant information is controlled for. However, valuation regressions estimated in prior research — using contemporaneous tax expense and non-tax variables — document...

A large body of literature demonstrates that acquisitions are on average value-destroying for the acquirer. We investigate whether the change in the acquirer's information uncertainty contributes to acquirer wealth losses. Information uncertainty affects the discount rate (the cost of capital),...

This study speaks to investment academics and practitioners by describing and analyzing the population of return predictive signals (RPS) publicly identified during the period 1970-2010. Our supraview brings to light a number of new facts about the population of RPS, including that more than 330...

This paper investigates whether fundamental accounting information is appropriately priced in the options market. We find that fundamental accounting signals exhibit incremental predictive power with respect to future option returns above and beyond what is captured by implied and historical...

This study investigates whether and how accounting conservatism improves the corporate information environment. We argue that conservatism facilitates the flow of firm-specific information from corporate insiders to outsiders and leads to a high-quality information environment. Using the Basu...

This paper explores whether accounting fraud can be detected using the information of firms that are economically linked to a focal firm. Specifically, we examine whether customer information disclosed by a supplier firm, combined with customers’ accounting information, helps to detect the...

This paper examines the association between corporate philanthropy and corporate misconduct. Using panel data from China, we find a negative relationship between philanthropic engagement and the likelihood of subsequent corporate misconduct. In addition, we find that the favorable effect of...