This paper studies financial statement information from the 50 largest international oil and gas companies during 1992 to 2011 and evaluates their relation to market values. In particular, we examine how this relationship is affected by accounting method choice (successful efforts versus full...

This paper examines price effects related to witching days in the US stock market using both weekly and daily data for three major indices, namely the Dow Jones, SP500 and Nasdaq, over the period 2000-2021. First it analyses whether or not anomalies in price behaviour arise from witching by...

This paper examines the main drawbacks of technical analysis. Although this is widely used by practitioners, from an academic perspective it can only be seen as a form of “voodoo finance”. In particular, it runs into the following pitfalls: Subjectivity; Doubtful assumptions; Unjustified...

The introduction of a common consolidated corporate tax base (CCCTB) and tax allocation via formula apportionment (FA) is hotly debated in the European Union (EU) since more than a decade. While the literature has thoroughly analyzed the economic effects of FA from a macro-level perspective, the...

We derive determinants of tax avoidance by means of a multi-task principal-agent model. We extend prevailing models by integrating both corporate and individual income taxation as well as by including tax planning effort in the agent's action portfolio. Our model shows novel and apparently...

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...

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...

In many industries like management consulting, IT consulting, or construction highly qualified employees, i.e., experts or executive managers, have to be assigned to temporary projects. In firms with many employees and various different projects, this assignment decision involves a complex...

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...