Standard setters have long deliberated the appropriate accounting for goodwill, with ambiguity surrounding its useful life complicating the issue. Recently, the FASB considered mandating a default useful life for goodwill with an option to deviate, but later decided to pause their deliberations...

We examine how investor relations officers (IROs) approach disclosure decisions in private meetings with investors. In these settings, IROs face conflicting pressures to maintain a “level playing field” for all investors while also pleasing preferred investors. We experimentally test how...

Fair value estimates reported in the financial statements differ in the subjectivity with which the estimates are measured. Mandated supplemental disclosures are intended to enable users to assess the nature of the inputs used to develop the fair value measurements, including their relative...

Firms often issue disaggregated earnings forecasts, and prior research reveals benefits to doing so. However, we hypothesize and experimentally find that the benefits of disaggregated forecasts do not necessarily carry over to the time of actual earnings announcements. Rather, disaggregated...

We survey recent (mainly US) research on the effects of earnings presentation attributes on manager and user behaviour. The literature we discuss relates to three primary earnings presentation attributes: (1) disaggregation (vertical and horizontal), (2) location (recognition vs. disclosure,...

We test whether investors react more strongly to narrative disclosures when the CEO's presence or association with the message is more salient in the disclosure, holding all other information constant. In our first experiment, we manipulate whether a CEO uses more personal pronouns (e.g.,...

In response to recommendations by the AICPA Special Committee on Financial Reporting and the Association for Investment Management and Research, the FASB has recently invited comment regarding the question ?Given [efficient] markets, would any disservice be done to the interests of individual...