We examine the relation between earnings smoothing, governance and liquidity for a sample of non-U.S. firms. We divide smoothing into innate and discretionary components, and find that discretionary smoothing is increasing in incentives to smooth (greater tax-book conformity, concentrated...

We compare the characteristics of US GAAP earnings for US firms with reconciled earnings for non-US firms cross listing on US markets. We find that the reconciled earnings for non-US firms differ systematically from US GAAP earnings for US firms, and are characterized by more evidence of...

We compare US firms' earnings with reconciled earnings for cross listed non-US firms. Non-US firms' earnings exhibit more evidence of smoothing, greater tendency to manage towards a target, lower association with share price and less timely recognition of losses. Firms from countries with weaker...

We examine the relation between firm-level transparency, stock market liquidity, and valuation across a variety of international settings. We document lower transaction costs and greater liquidity (as measured by lower bid-ask spreads and fewer zero-return days) for firms with greater...

We provide evidence on the characteristics of local-GAAP reported earnings for firms choosing to cross list in US markets relative to both a matched sample of foreign firms currently not choosing to cross list and a matched sample of US firms. Our evidence suggests that cross-listing firms...

We provide evidence on the characteristics of local-GAAP earnings for firms cross listing on US exchanges relative to a matched sample of foreign firms currently not cross listing in the US to investigate whether US listing is associated with differences in accounting data reported in local...

I discuss the analysis in Piotroski and Srinivasan (2008) and how it helps to disentangle the effects of Sarbanes Oxley on observed listing patterns. Since the paper is quite thorough and reflects the comments from many workshop participants, I focus on broader issues. Further, I attempt to...

We examine changes in cross-country financial statement comparability around mandatory IFRS adoption and the effects of these changes on firms' information environments, as captured by analyst properties and bid-ask spreads. First, we show that cross-country earnings comovement is negatively...

Bowen, Chen and Cheng (2008) document a negative association between analyst following and the discount at issuance of seasoned equity offerings which, they argue, provides evidence of a direct link between analyst following, information asymmetry and cost of capital. While the empirical setting...