Divergent views exist about whether boards must tradeoff advising for monitoring performance when utilizing outside versus inside directors. We suggest a dichotomous tradeoff focus underestimates outside directors׳ impact on board performance. We find outside director tenure positively...

This paper examines the impact of a defined benefit (DB) pension plan freeze on the sponsoring firm's risk and risk-taking activities. Using a sample of firms declaring a hard freeze on their DB plans between 2002 and 2007, we observe an increase in total risk (proxied by the standard deviation...

Theory suggests that debt financing, relative to equity financing, makes managers reluctant to part with assets. Our evidence supports this theoretical prediction, revealing that the reluctance to part with a debt financed asset causes two decision errors—(1) participants forego investments...

We use earnings forecasts from a cross-sectional model to proxy for cash flow expectations and estimate the implied cost of capital (ICC) for a large sample of firms over 1968–2008. The earnings forecasts generated by the cross-sectional model are superior to analysts' forecasts in terms of...

We provide more direct evidence on the causal relation between the quality of financial reporting and investment efficiency. We examine the investment behavior of a sample of firms that disclosed internal control weaknesses under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. We find that prior to the disclosure,...

This paper investigates whether the initiation of trading in credit default swaps (CDSs) on a borrowing firm׳s outstanding debt is associated with a decline in that firm׳s reporting conservatism. CDS investments can modify lenders׳ payoffs on their loan portfolios by providing insurance on...

In recent years, reporting under International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) became mandatory in many countries. The capital-market effects around this change have been extensively studied, but their sources are not yet well understood. This study aims to distinguish between several...

We provide insights into earnings quality from a survey of 169 CFOs of public companies and in-depth interviews of 12 CFOs and two standard setters. CFOs believe that (i) above all, high-quality earnings are sustainable and repeatable; specific characteristics include consistent reporting...

Various studies have investigated variation in reporting conservatism with pre-specified contractual incentives. Lawrence et al. (forthcoming), hereafter LSS, propose a model to control for “normal” or “non-discretionary” conservatism while testing for variation in conservatism with...

Using cross-country data on trading by international mutual funds, I find that firms with more opaque information environments, as captured by firm- and country-level measures of the availability of financial reporting information, experience more privately informed trading by institutional...