Advance pricing agreements (APAs) determine transfer prices for intra-firm transactions in advance. This paper interprets these contracts as a means to overcome a hold-up problem that occurs because governments cannot commit to non-excessive future tax rates. In addition, with private...

We study a principal-agent model in which the agent can provide ex post additional relevant information regarding his performance. In particular, he can provide a legitimate excuse, that is, evidence that a poor result is only due to factors outside his control. However, building a convincing...

This paper examines a life-cycle cost concept that applies to both manufacturing and service industries in which upfront capacity investments are essential. Borrowing from the energy literature, we refer to this cost measure as the levelized product cost (LC). Per unit of output, the levelized...

We decompose the market-to-book ratio into two additive components: a conservatism correction factor and a future-to-book ratio. The conservatism correction factor exceeds the benchmark value of one whenever the accounting for past transactions has been subject to an (unconditional) conservatism...

In this article, we have used a continuous EBIT-based model to study deferred taxation under default risk. Quite surprisingly, default risk has been disregarded in research on deferred taxation. In order to underline its importance, we first calculated the probability of default, over a given...

For mitigating the problems of transfer pricing formula apportionment (FA) is discussed intensively. However, FA could even be more harmful than transfer pricing because income shifting would require changing economic decisions instead of just taking advantage of accounting options. We analyze...

Asymmetric persistence of accounting income is often tested in a regression of changes in earnings on lagged changes in earnings, including an interaction term for negative changes (see Basu [1997] or Ball et al. [2009] for a recent overview). In this note we propose an alternative, but closely...

This paper analyzes the effects of symmetric and asymmetric taxation on performance-based versus fixed remuneration contracts. I integrate a proportional corporation tax and a proportional wage tax into a binary principal-agent model. The wage tax increases the remuneration costs and makes the...

We examine the combined effects of asymmetric taxation and limited liability on optimal risk taking of investors. Given an optimal risk level in the pre-tax case under full liability, loss-offset restrictions reduce, and limited liability enhances the incentives for taking risk. For every degree...

This paper provides further empirical evidence on the relationship between taxes and financial reporting by focusing on accounting decisions to write-offs equity investments. The analysis is based on panel data for Italian companies. In the period 1998-2006 the Italian corporate income tax has...