We present a description of two different accounting regimes that govern reporting practice in most developed countries. 'One-book' countries, e.g. Germany, use their tax books as the basis for financial reporting and 'two-book' countries, e.g. the United States, keep the books largely separate....

Much recent work in strategy and popular discussion suggests that an excessive focus on "managing the numbers" --delivering quarterly earnings at the expense of longer term investments--makes it difficult for firms to make the investments necessary to build competitive advantage. "Short termism"...

This study examines the tax reporting consequences of financial reporting discretion. Using a matched sample of financial statements with tax returns, I provide estimates of the accuracy of tax return information inferred from financial statements. To examine the tradeoffs between financial and...

Managers appear to manipulate firm earnings when they characterize pension assets to capital markets and alter investment decisions to justify, and capitalize on, these manipulations. We construct a measure of the sensitivity of reported earnings to the assumed long-term rate of return on...

Earnings are the flow of value created by corporations. I concentrate on the concept called EBITDA earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. This measure captures the results of the substantive non-financial activities of corporations and corresponds to the rental price of...

This paper offers a new explanation of the dividend puzzle, based upon a model in which firms attempt to signal profitability by distrubuting cash to shareholders. I assume that dividends and repurchases are identical, except that dividends are taxed more heavily. Nevertheless, I demonstrate...

Banks' balance-sheet exposure to fluctuations in interest rates strongly forecasts excess Treasury bond returns. This result is consistent with optimal risk management, a banking counterpart to the household Euler equation. In equilibrium, the bond risk premium compensates banks for bearing...

We document five facts about banks: (1) market and book leverage diverged during the 2008 crisis, (2) Tobin's Q predicts future profitability, (3) neither book nor market leverage appears constrained, (4) banks maintain a market leverage target that is reached slowly, (5) pre-crisis, leverage...

While many analyses of monetary policy consider only a target for a short-term nominal interest rate, other dimensions of policy have recently been of greater importance: changes in the supply of bank reserves, changes in the assets acquired by central banks, and changes in the interest rate...