We investigate a sample of 96 firms that publicly renounced quarterly EPS guidance in the post-FD period (10/2000 to 1/2006). We find that stoppers have poor trailing stock return performance and lower institutional ownership. We document an average -4.8% three-day return around the announcement...

I argue that academic research in accounting has strayed from producing work that is useful to either practitioners or policy makers. I use three criteria to arrive at that assessment: (i) how many products and processes has accounting research produced in the last 50 years? (ii) how much...

We present interview evidence from financial executives that highlights how thinking about culture in a quantitative way and making continuous investments in culture can amplify success, improve firm value, and help employees thrive in the new world of work. By reporting financial executives’...

How do firms repair their reputations after a serious accounting restatement? To answer this question, we review firms' press releases and identify 1,765 reputation-building actions taken by: (1) 94 restating firms in the periods before and after their restatement; and (2) a set of matched...

We provide a comprehensive overview of shareholder litigation against auditors since the passage of the PSLRA. The number of lawsuits per year has declined, dismissals have increased, and settlements in recent years have declined. Our study asks why. Because we find that the likelihood an...

How do firms repair their reputations after a serious accounting restatement? To answer this question, we review firms' press releases and identify 1,765 reputation-building actions taken by: (i) 94 restating firms in the periods before and after their restatement; and (ii) a set of matched...

We provide evidence on the long standing concern on auditor conflicts of interest from providing non-audit services (NAS) to audit clients by using rarely explored NAS fee data from 1978-80 Using this earlier setting, we find cross-sectional evidence of improved earnings quality when auditors...

The competitive target pay policy sets a target dollar number for total CEO compensation within a specified range of the amounts paid to a CEO’s peers chosen from similar sized firms in the same industry. If such a policy were widely adopted by compensation committees, we would observe a...

MSCI, widely considered the largest data provider to the ESG investment community, sells ESG ratings for companies and constructs its own ESG indexes based on such ratings. Such ESG indexes underlie the creation of several ESG ETFs (exchange traded funds) or mutual funds. Motivated by such...