The Enron-Andersen debacle provides a unique opportunity to investigate whether equity prices impound auditor reputation. We address this issue by comparing the daily stock returns of a sample of Andersen audit clients with those of a control sample of big five non-Andersen audit clients during...

Are foreign investors in emerging markets more financial statement literate than domestic investors? If so, this conjecture implies that foreign (domestic) investors are more likely to revise their return expectations to cash flow (discount rate) news. It also implies that cash flow news and...

This study examines whether the term of the auditor-client relationship (i.e., auditor tenure) is associated with future stock price crash risk measured both ex ante and ex post. Using a large sample of U.S. public firms with Big Four auditors, we find robust evidence that auditor tenure is...

This study investigates a large sample of financial statement restatements over the period 1986-2001, and compares restatements caused by changes in accounting principles to those caused by errors. Typically, investors perceive restatements as negative signals due to three potential reasons: (i)...

This paper extends the variance decomposition framework of Campbell (1991), Campbell and Ammer (1993) and Vuolteenaho (2002) to address the relative value relevance of accrual news, cash flow news and expected return news in driving firm-level equity returns. The extension is based on the...

This paper investigates the relation between the extent of a firm's past and expected future losses or negative cash flows and the ex ante probability that it will manipulate revenues. When a firm has a string of losses or negative cash flows, traditional valuation models do not yield reliable...

This pedagogical note introduces the accounting-based variance decomposition methodology of Vuolteenaho (2002) in a relatively simple format for the edification of accounting scholars and Ph.D. students who wish to use variance decomposition in their research. In addition to presenting an...

The Vuolteenaho (2002) return decomposition is linear because it assumes that the market's return expectations are obtained solely from accounting information. By restricting accounting recognition rules to specific (and primarily) negative future cash flow shocks, conservative accounting drives...

This study evaluates the impact of earnings on firm credit risk as captured by Credit Default Swaps (CDS). We find that earnings (changes) are negatively correlated with one-year swap premia (changes) after controlling for equity returns but not with longer term premia (changes). We also find...

We examine whether domestic or foreign earnings contribute more to the variability of unexpected stock returns for a sample of U.S. multinationals and consider the role of investor sophistication. We use a variance decomposition methodology that measures the contribution of each earnings...