We investigate managers' decisions to supplement their firms' management earnings forecasts. We classify these supplementary disclosures as either qualitative "soft talk" disclosures or verifiable forward-looking statements. We find that managers provide "soft talk" disclosures with similar...

Based on extant literature, we review the positive theory of GAAP. The theory predicts that GAAP's principal focus is on control (performance measurement and stewardship) and that verifiability and conservatism are critical features of a GAAP shaped by market forces. We recognize the advantage...

We study events surrounding ChuoAoyama’s failed audit of Kanebo, a large Japanese cosmetics company whose management engaged in a massive accounting fraud. ChuoAoyama was PwC’s Japanese affiliate and one of Japan’s “Big Four” audit firms. In May 2006, the Japanese Financial Services...

We present a synthesis of academic research on corporate payout policy grounded in the pioneering contributions of Lintner (1956) and Miller and Modigliani (1961). We conclude that a simple asymmetric information framework that emphasizes the need to distribute FCF and that embeds agency costs...

Demerjian (2011) argues that a shift by U.S. standard setters towards the balance sheet approach reduces the usefulness of balance sheet numbers for contracting. Consistent with this argument, he provides evidence of a decline in the use of balance sheet-based covenants in debt contracts, a...

Changes in bid-ask spreads are small around earnings announcements in general. However, there is evidence of a temporary increase in bid-ask spreads at the time earnings are announced for announcements that convey the most information, especially for announcements that are late and convey bad...

Dichev, Graham, Harvey and Rajgopal (DGHR 2013) survey CFOs to elicit their views on earnings quality, broader trends in financial reporting, and the prevalence of earnings management. They provide some interesting insights on these issues. We discuss how CFOs' incentives in the financial...

We investigate whether earnings guidance affects aggregate stock returns through its effects on expectations about overall earnings performance and/or aggregate expected returns. We find that aggregate guidance, especially relative levels of quarterly downward guidance, is associated with...

This paper provides evidence on firms that report long quot;stringsquot; of consecutive increases in earnings per share (EPS). First, we find 746 firms that report earnings strings of at least 20 quarters since 1962, and show that this frequency is much larger than would be expected by chance....