I examine whether managers use discretion in the two accounts related to revenue recognition, accounts receivable and deferred revenue, to avoid three common earnings benchmarks. I find that managers use discretion in both accounts to avoid negative earnings surprises. I find that neither of...

This paper studies how the investors' attitude towards earnings surprises affects the managers' incentives to manipulate earnings in an intertemporal context, where the consensus forecast of the analysts is not exogenously given but determined by the strategic interaction between the analysts...

In 1980, Chile privatized its social security system, and currently there are five private pension funds managing approximately US$83 billion worth of retirement investments. The regulations provide for pension funds to appoint a member to the board of directors, and influence the appointment of...

The pressure to meet/beat analysts' expectations is often blamed for the recent onslaught of accounting scandals. We investigate changes in the meeting/beating phenomenon post-scandals and find that the stock market premium to meeting or just beating analyst estimates has disappeared while the...

A firm meets or beats expectations when it reports earnings that are at or above the consensus analysts' forecast. We argue that two types of firms MBE: strong firms who commit to future performance and signal future earnings by MBE, and weak firms who attempt to mimic strong firms by managing...

We predict and find that regulations expected to harmonize and strengthen firms' financial reporting in the European Union (EU) in the early 2000s increase Tobin's Q ratios of firms with high agency costs due to (a) concentration of control (entrenchment) and (b) an excess of the largest...

We examine the association between board independence and the characteristics of non-GAAP earnings. Our results suggest that companies with less independent boards are more likely to opportunistically exclude recurring items from non-GAAP earnings. Specifically, we find that exclusions from...

This study examines the association between CFOs' equity incentives and earnings management. CEOs' equity incentives have been shown to be associated with accruals management, beating earnings benchmarks, and earnings restatements (Bergstresser and Philippon, 2006; Cheng and Warfield, 2005; McAnally et...

This study examines whether differential interpretation of earnings announcements is affected by earnings and firm characteristics. We find that Kandel and Pearson's (1995) forecast measures of differential interpretation are: 1) negatively related to earnings predictability, firm size, and...

This paper examines the consequences of expectations management for the usefulness of analyst forecasts in firm valuation. Specifically, I compare the performances of valuation models estimated using manipulated versus non-manipulated forecasts to predict firms' intrinsic values. The results...