This study analyzes the relation between accounting conservatism, future tax rate cuts and countries' level of book-tax conformity. Firms have an incentive to increase conservatism in financial reporting when a tax rate cut is imminent to shift taxable income into the lower taxed future. Using a...

Since 2010 a number of firms have voluntarily adopted mark-to-market (MTM) accounting for the actuarial gains and losses associated with their defined benefit pension plans. While pension accounting rules have allowed such a choice since 1986, only recently have firms begun to exercise that...

This paper studies the earnings management behavior of a manager in a strategic game in which the manager may have incentives to avoid earnings below the analysts' consensus forecast and the analysts aiming to provide accurate forecasts behave as rational Bayesians. Our analysis reveals the...

Does earnings management, even though legal, hinder investor trust in reported earnings? Or do investors regard earnings management as a way for firms to convey private information, or simply as a neutral feature of financial reporting? We find that past abstinence from earnings management...

Ideally, firms should discontinue projects that become unprofitable. Managers, however, continue to operate such projects because of their limited employment horizons and empire-building motivations (Jensen, 1986; Ball, 2001). Prior studies suggest that timely loss recognition in accounting earnings...

Unlike previous studies that focus on accrual-based earnings management, this study analyzes real activities manipulation and investigates whether female directors on boards of directors (BoDs) affect managers’ real activities manipulation. Using a large sample of 11,831 firm-year observations...

We model the dynamic survival of earnings fixated investors in a competitive securities market that allows for learning and arbitrage and that is populated by heterogeneous investors. Our model is distinct from those based on aggressive trading by overconfident investors. We prove that in the...

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of social relations among the board members on earnings management in Pakistani listed companies. Specifically, we have analyzed the social networks between CEO and outside board members. The modified Jones model has been used in this study to...

The paper analyses the timing of disclosing financial statements for small and medium enterprises (SME) in Germany in 2007 and 2008. Comparisons of different regional areas and different company sizes are made and possible explanations for the results discussed. -- Rechnungslegungspolitik ;...