Motivated by agency theory, this study investigates how staggered boards influence accounting discretion. The results indicate that staggered boards do affect accounting discretion. In fact, the impact of staggered boards on accounting discretion is substantially larger (about seven times...

We relate the agency issues inherent in management buyouts and in earnings management. Income-reducing earnings management occurs prior to management buyouts. When insiders own small amounts of stock, outside monitoring mechanisms such as institutional ownership and Big Six audit firms reduce...

We examine how CEO power affects the extent of analyst coverage. CEO power may influence the CEO's incentives to disclose information. The amount of information disclosed by the firm in turn influences the information environment, which affects the financial analyst's incentives to “cover”...

We relate impression and earnings management to the field of ethnostatistics, the study of how statistics are produced and managed. By further linking impression management and agency theory, we show that earnings management may exacerbate agency problems. We hypothesize that earnings-increasing...

Companies change auditors for a variety of reasons. At one end of the continuum, companies change auditors to improve operating performance. At the other, managers change auditors to enhance their own position. If auditor changes are driven by managerial opportunism, companies may increase their...

This study explores the impact of corporate takeover defenses on the extent of earnings management in the U.S. Theoretically, it is not obvious whether takeover defenses alleviate or exacerbate earnings management. I examine four well-known corporate takeover defenses; blank check preferred...

Exploiting the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) as an exogenous regulatory shock, we investigate whether board independence substitutes for external audit quality. Based on over 14,000 observation across 18 years, our difference-in-difference estimates show that firms forced to raise...

We use agency theory to explore how analyst coverage is influenced by the managerial entrenchment associated with the staggered (or classified) board. The empirical evidence suggests that firms with staggered boards attract significantly larger analyst following. We also document that firms with...

Earnings play a vital role in portraying a company's economic health. Hence, executives have incentives to manage earnings. Motivated by Degeorge et al. (1999) and Burgstahler and Dichev (1997), this study applies the behavioral framework developed by Degeorge et al. (1999) to investigate...

Exploiting a quasi-natural experiment based on an exogenous regulatory shock, we explore the effect of board independence on customer concentration. Our difference-in-difference estimates reveal that stronger board independence raises customer concentration. Specifically, a majority of...