This paper examines why CFOs become involved in material accounting manipulations. We find that while CFOs bear substantial legal costs when involved in accounting manipulations, these CFOs have similar equity incentives to the CFOs of matched non-manipulation firms. In contrast, CEOs of...

Researchers have used various measures as indications of "earnings quality" including persistence, accruals, smoothness, timeliness, loss avoidance, investor responsiveness, and external indicators such as restatements and SEC enforcement releases. For each measure, we discuss causes of...

This paper investigates the costs, benefits and frequency of management earnings guidance issued by firms manipulating earnings. We find that, when manipulations are detected, misstating firms issuing guidance and their managers incur additional legal costs, as reflected in the higher settlement...