Using logit-based financial statement analysis, Ou and Penman estimate an earnings predictor (Pr) that also predicts returns. We develop a forecasting model that purges measurement error (i.e., expected earnings) from the Ou and Penman proxy for the market's unexpected earnings. If market...

Khan and Watts (2009) develop a firm-year measure of conditional conservatism, labeled C_Score, that builds on the Basu (1997) asymmetric timeliness (AT) measure. However, recent research documents an asymmetric relation between lagged earnings and current returns, indicative of bias in the Basu...

This study extends the employee stock option literature by examining how the timing of sales of shares acquired at exercise varies with accrual management both before and after the exercise date. We find evidence that accrual management prior to exercise is positively associated with the...

When analysts issue both earnings and pre-tax income forecasts, they implicitly provide a forecast of income tax expense. We find that these pre-tax income forecasts have a negative (positive) effect on corporate tax avoidance for firms with relatively aggressive (non-aggressive) tax policy. We...

Traditional finance theory suggests that riskier investments should yield higher returns. Challenging this notion, anecdotal and empirical evidence suggests that highly-incented managers may take on excessive risk, leading to greater losses, while other theoretical research argues that high...

This paper examines whether analysts' pre-tax income forecasts mitigate the tax expense anomaly documented by Thomas and Zhang (J Account Res 49:791–821, 2011). They find that seasonal changes in quarterly income tax expense are positively related to future returns after controlling for the...