This paper models the demand by auditors for bright-line financial reporting standards, and compares auditors' preferences for bright-line standards with managers' and regulators' preferences. Bright-line standards are unambiguous, requiring no judgment in their application. Standards that are...

We suggest that the failure of investors to distinguish between an earnings component's autocorrelation coefficient (unconditional persistence) and the marginal contribution of that component's persistence to the persistence of earnings (conditional persistence) provides a partial explanation to...