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...

The competitive target pay policy sets a target amount of total compensation within a specified range of the amount paid to executive peers. If such a policy were widely adopted by compensation committees, we would observe a negative cross-sectional association between the stock price...

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...

Regulators have alleged that digital giants (Alphabet, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon) have misused their market power to earn abnormal profits. Research that systematically documents whether technology firms earn abnormal profits is limited, arguably because (i) U.S. GAAP based...

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...

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...

The Financial Accounting Standards Committee of the American Accounting Association (the Committee) is charged with responding to requests for comments from standard-setters on issues related to financial reporting. The Financial Accounting Foundation (FAF) recently released for public comment,...