Investors are keenly interested in financial reports of earnings because earnings provide important information for investment decisions. Thus, executives who are monitored by investors and directors face strong incentives to manage earnings. We introduce consideration of...

Empirical evidence suggests that the distribution of earnings reports exhibits kinks. Managers manage earnings as if to meet exogenously pre-specified targets, such as avoiding losses and avoiding a decrease in earnings. This is puzzling because the compensation to managers at these...

I characterize the effects of empirically observed managerial incentives on long-run oligopolistic competition. When managers have a preference for smooth time-paths of profits – as revealed by the empirical literature on ‘income smoothing’ – manager-led firms can sustain collusive...