We provide evidence that firms with more transparent earnings enjoy a lower cost of capital. We base our earnings transparency measure on the extent to which earnings and change in earnings covary contemporaneously with returns. We find a significant negative relation between our transparency...

This study addresses whether asset securitizations are really asset sales or a form of secured borrowing, by estimating cross-sectional equity valuation regressions to assess whether the stock market treats securitized assets and liabilities held by a special purpose entity (SPE) as assets and...

Amendment of IAS 39 by the IASB in 2008 provided an option to reclassify investments from fair value to historical cost. Whereas this option was available to all firms, it was particularly relevant to banks. We predict that “too important to fail” (TITF) banks took less advantage of this...

This study addresses whether firms provide more voluntary disclosures if they redact otherwise mandatorily disclosed contract information, whether firms have higher information uncertainty after they redact, and, if so, the extent to which this higher uncertainty is mitigated by the disclosures....

This study finds that the requirement of ASC 842 for firms to capitalize operating leases in financial statements beginning in 2019 resulted in firms affected by the standard reducing existing debt amounts on average between 7% and 10% relative to unaffected firms. We also find that firms with...