This study examines the predictive power of comprehensive income and its individual components within the homogenous institutional setting of German IFRS firms. The results could be relevant for the standard setters IASB and FASB and their joint project “Financial Statement Presentation”. We...

This paper investigates whether there is market reaction to and value-relevance of information contained in the mandatory transitional documents required by IFRS 1 (2005). These documents detail the reconciliation adjustments necessary to a firm's previously reported UK GAAP accounts to achieve...

This paper examines the effect of income smoothing on information uncertainty, stock returns, and cost of equity. I show that income smoothing through both total accruals and discretionary accruals tends to reduce firms' information uncertainty, as measured by stock return volatility, analyst...

This paper examines how the quality of firm information disclosure affects shareholders' use of dividends to mitigate agency problems. Managerial compensation is linked to firm value. However, because the manager and shareholders are asymmetrically informed, the manager can manipulate the firm's...

Contracting parties, such as the firm and its supplier, have cost-reducing incentives to make investments which support the unique transactions between them. However, to the extent that one party may renege on its contractual obligations, the other party incurring the cost of the...

Commonly used Jones-type discretionary accrual models applied in quarterly settings do not adequately control for nondiscretionary accruals that naturally occur due to firm growth. We show that the relation between quarterly accruals and backward-looking sales growth (measured over a rolling...

We examine the effects of performance measure properties on incentive system design, using data on incentive contracts for auto dealership managers. The data include information on five properties: two indicators of risk; two indicators of distortion; and one indicator of potential manipulation....

Contracting parties (e.g., the firm and its supplier) have cost-reducing incentives to make investments which support the unique transactions between them. However, to the extent that one party may renege on its contractual obligations, the other party incurring the cost of the...

Using a sample of firms that have consecutive earnings growth for more than 20 quarters (earnings strings), I assess the relationship between earnings persistence and the extent to which investors are able to anticipate breaks of earnings strings. I find that firm-specific earnings persistence...

Despite the importance of intellectual capital (IC), accounting standards are conservative concerning the capitalization of IC as assets. Thus, intangible-intensive firms disclose additional IC information, e.g. in their annual reports. The market-to-book value (MBV) ratio is regarded as an...