Recent research in accounting has documented a dramatic increase in the number of firms reporting losses. This increase in losses calls into question the value relevance of earnings numbers. If a firm is likely to be abandoned, its book value will be more relevant than the magnitude of its loss...

In this paper, we examine whether insider share selling in an initial public offering (IPO) influences Ramp;D expenditures. Insiders (managers and venture capitalists) who sell their pre-offering shareholdings might try to increase the IPO offer price (i) by over-investing in Ramp;D to signal...

We examine the information role of accounting disclosures on warranties, utilizing a database that became available due to the requirements of FIN 45. First, because firms use warranty policies as a business strategy to promote their products, a warranty reserve can serve two roles: an...

We analyze the expected value of information about an agent's type in the presence of moral hazard and adverse selection. Information about the agent's type enables the principal to sort/screen agents of different types. The value of the information decreases in the variability of output and the...

In the mid-2000s, the European Union (EU) adopted a number of regulatory reforms intended to increase transparency and disclosure for IPO firms, including mandating the use of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). The reforms also included (1) adoption of the Prospectus Directive...

This study examines whether delistings due to mergers and acquisitions (i.e., M&A delistings) result in negative information externalities for industry peer firms. Prior research shows that firms' disclosures provide useful information spillovers to other firms in the same industry; importantly,...

This paper examines whether firms benefit, in debt contracting, from committing to incorporate future GAAP changes (referred to as rolling GAAP) or not to incorporate any future changes (referred to as frozen GAAP). We show that informative future accounting changes do not necessarily improve...

Recent empirical research has documented a substantial decrease in average accounting profitability. The phenomenon appears inconsistent with the observation that corporate profit as a fraction of national income as remained stable. This paper shows that the downward trend is fully explicable by...

We examine whether a stock price spillover effect spreads through the method of listing or country of origin and whether this spillover effect changes when investor sentiment shifts. Using a sample of fraud allegations against Chinese companies that became public through reverse mergers (CRMs),...

We examine the spillover effect of fraud allegations against Chinese companies that became public through reverse mergers (CRMs) instead of IPOs. Both short sellers and regulators took active interests in the frauds allegedly perpetrated by CRMs. Once the public became alarmed by the frequency...