We study the intertemporal properties of accounting conservatism with a focus on managerial incentives. In our main model, conservatism results in smaller expected payouts to the manager (agent) in early periods and larger expected payouts in later periods. Conservatism shifts (ambiguous)...

Recent corporate governance failures have prompted regulators and legislators to introduce new rules and legislation aimed at improving corporate governance. In this paper, I highlight a potential unintended consequence of such actions by showing that increasing oversight may sometimes be the...

In this paper we explore the role of accruals in determining “earnings quality” from both a stewardship and a valuation perspective. We show that the valuation and stewardship qualities of accrual accounting are maximized by either an “aggressive” or a “conservative” accrual...

This study proposes and tests an alternative to the extant earnings management explanation for zero and small positive earnings surprises (i.e., analyst forecast errors). We argue that analysts' ability to strategically induce slight pessimism in earnings forecasts varies with the precision of...

A premise of standard setters and of much empirical research is that improving the quality of accounting standards and their implementation increases information in capital markets. This paper challenges this premise and shows that there are situations in which “better”, i.e., more...

Overconfident CEOs are more willing to initiate investment projects that require experimentation, yet tend to defer responding to the bad news when the project is not performing as planned. Accounting conservatism accelerates the recognition of the bad news and its dissemination to gatekeepers,...

This study investigates how FinTech development affects financial reporting quality. We characterize the regional FinTech development using manually collected information on FinTech patents, and find that regional FinTech development reduces local firms’ real earnings management. The mechanism...

This paper examines how the characteristics of accounting systems and management incentives interact and collectively determine financial reporting quality. We develop a rational expectations equilibrium model that features a steady-state firm with investments, financial and non-financial...

Der vorliegende Beitrag untersucht, ob der Mehrheitsaktionär einer Gesellschaft im Vorfeld eines Zwangsausschlusses von Minderheitsaktionären (sog. Squeeze-Out) versucht, die Kapitalmarkterwartungen negativ zu beeinflussen. Ein solches 'manipulatives' Verhalten wird häufig in der juristischen...

We examine how a CEO develops a reputation for credible financial reporting and how this reputation influences investor reactions to earnings announcements. We find that investors discount earnings news when CEOs have both strong incentives to misreport and weak reporting reputations. Further,...