We examine 2,190 SEC Accounting and Auditing Enforcement Releases (AAERs) issued between 1982 and 2005. We obtain a comprehensive sample of firms that are alleged to have misstated their financial statements. We examine the characteristics of misstating firms along five dimensions: accrual...

We derive a measure of implied equity duration as a natural extension of the traditional measure of bond duration and develop an algorithm for the empirical estimation of implied equity duration. We show that the standard empirical predictions and results for bond duration hold for our measure...

We derive a measure of implied equity duration as a natural extension of the traditional measure of bond duration and develop an algorithm for the empirical estimation of implied equity duration. We show that the standard empirical predictions and results for bond duration hold for our measure...

We evaluate the role of sell-side analysts' long-term earnings growth forecasts in the pricing of common equity offerings. We find that, in general, sell-side analysts' long-term growth forecasts are systematically overly optimistic around equity offerings and that analysts employed by the lead...

This study investigates firms subject to accounting enforcement actions by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for alleged violations of GAAP. We investigate: (i) the extent to which the alleged earnings manipulations can be explained by extant earnings management hypotheses; (ii) the...

Prior research shows that the cash component of earnings is more persistent than the accrual component of earnings. We investigate whether the persistence of the cash component is influenced by management's decision to retain or distribute cash flows. We find that when firms retain the cash...

This paper examines the ability of hypotheses based on naive investor expectations to explain the higher returns to contrarian investment strategies. Inconsistent with Lakonishok, Shleifer and Vishny (1995), we find no systematic evidence that stock prices naively reflect extrapolation of past...

This paper evaluates alternative models for detecting earnings management. The paper restricts itself to models that assume the construct being managed is discretionary accruals, since such models are commonly used in the extant accounting literature. Existing models range from simple models in...

This paper investigates the motivations for managers' decisions to overstate earnings and examines the consequences of such decisions. We examine firms subject to enforcement actions by the Securities and Exchange Commission for having violated the financial reporting requirements of the...

Duration is an important and well-established risk characteristic for fixed income securities. We use recent developments in financial statement analysis research to construct a measure of duration for equity securities. We find that the standard empirical predictions and results for fixed...