We match large U.S. corporations' tax returns during 1989-2001 to their financial statements to construct a firm-level proxy of firms' use of off-balance sheet and hybrid debt financing. We find that firms with less favorable prior-period Standard & Poor's (S&P) bond ratings or higher leverage...

We compare executive equity incentives of firms accused of accounting fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) during the period 1996-2003 with two samples of firms not accused of fraud. We measure equity incentives in a variety of ways and employ a battery of empirical tests. We...