Real Earnings Management (REM) is the manipulation of business activities to meet an earning's threshold. Despite concern that REM activities create real economic costs, research on the relation between REM and subsequent operating performance is inconclusive. In this paper, a two-firm-level...

As of February 28, 2006, 958 publicly held companies accelerated the vesting of some or all of their employee stock options in advance of adopting SFAS 123 (R). In doing so, these companies, on average, avoided $11.3 (8.4) million in pretax (after tax) expense, which represented 42 percent of...