Extant theoretical research posits that information asymmetry and agency issues affect the cost of external financing and hence impact firms' ability to finance its growth opportunities. In contrast, the literature on disclosure policy posits that an expanded and credible disclosure lowers the...

The Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 (TRA 1997) reduced the net operating loss (NOL) carryback period from three to two years, thereby creating a short term incentive effect due to the increased opportunity cost of not recognizing a NOL in the transitional fiscal year of 1997. Specifically, failure...

Extant research argues that borrowing from financial intermediaries subjects managers to external monitoring. However, given managers' flexibility in choosing the type of debt financing, why would managers submit themselves to external monitoring? Recent theory points to the role of managerial...

This paper examines whether a country's corporate transparency environment, which includes the quality of accounting information, contributes to efficient resource allocation. Based on a cross-country study of 37 manufacturing industries in 37 countries, we provide three pieces of related...

Based on pooled cross-sectional analysis, we find a robust positive relation between product market competition and conditional accounting conservatism. We also find evidence of an inter-temporal increase in conditional conservatism following industry deregulation and increased antitrust case...

Recent research documents that common law countries have stronger investor protection laws and more developed financial markets than civil law countries (La Porta et al., 1997, 1998). This line of inquiry is extended in our study to examine if variations in legal systems also affect accounting...

This study provides international evidence that external financing dependence creates incentives for firms to undertake a higher level of voluntary accounting disclosure. For a sample of 856 observations from 34 countries and 18 different manufacturing industry sectors, we document that firms in...

We examine voluntary disclosure activities around actual share repurchases. We find that managers increase the percentage and magnitude of bad news announcements during the one-month period prior to repurchasing shares. We find weaker evidence that managers increase the percentage and magnitude...

The adoption of international accounting standards, namely the IFRS, at the country level has sparked two contrasting, but not mutually exclusive, viewpoints. One view is that IFRS engenders better reporting standards and uniform adoption allows for greater comparability. The upshot is that IFRS...

Do restatements result in lower firm growth? One argument in support of this contention is that accounting restatements hurt contracting relations between the firm and outside parties such as a firm's customers and suppliers, negatively impacting firm cash flows. The negative impact on cash flow...