This study uses a comprehensive panel of tax returns to examine the financial reporting choices of medium-to-large private U.S. firms, a setting which controls over $9 trillion in capital, vastly out-numbers public U.S. firms across all industries, yet has no financial reporting mandates. We...

A substantial literature investigates conditional conservatism, defined as asymmetric accounting recognition of economic shocks (ldquo;newsrdquo;), and how it depends on various market, political and institutional variables. Studies typically assume the Basu (1997) asymmetric timeliness...

I investigate how the use and voluntary disclosure of synthetic leases is affected by incentives to defer cash outflows and keep debt off the balance sheet. I find that managers of cash-constrained firms with incentives to defer cash payments are more likely to finance asset purchases with...

We use equity portfolio allocation decisions to study the relevance of accounting information for investors’ demand for stocks. We document significant heterogeneity across investors in the demand relevance of profitability measures and income statement components. Although operating profit...

We investigate the extent to which hedge fund managers smooth self‐reported returns. In contrast with prior research on the “anomalous” properties of hedge fund returns, we observe the mechanisms used to price the fund's investment positions and report the fund's performance to investors,...

We examine the relation between mark-to-market (MTM) accounting for securities and information asymmetry among bank investors. Relative to historical cost, MTM incorporates more timely information in financial statements. The primary effect of more timely disclosure most likely is to reduce...

In this paper we investigate whether the secondary market trading of syndicated loans compromises the quality of bank lending practices. We compare the performance of borrowers of traded loans following the initial trading event against the performance of borrowers of non-traded loans following...

The choice between fair value and historical cost accounting is the subject of long-standing controversy among accounting academics and regulators. Nevertheless, the market-based evidence on this subject is very limited. We study the choice of fair value versus historical cost accounting for...

We estimate the firm-level rate at which working capital accruals convert into future cash flows. These conversion rates determine the expected cash value of a dollar of working capital accruals. For firms whose accrual innovations reverse within one year, we find that, on average, a one dollar...

I develop a new approach to understanding accounting accruals. I start by introducing a model that explicitly incorporates the role of accruals in measuring firm performance. Using this model, I characterize accounting quality by the degree to which accruals fulfill their performance measurement...