We examine the economic consequences of the recent adoption of SFAS 123(R) in the United States. Consistent with the conjectures of prior research, our results show that the removal of favorable accounting treatment for stock options post SFAS 123(R) results in a switch from stock options to...

Financial economics has traditionally posited a limited role for idiosyncratic noneconomic manager-specific influences, but the strategic management literature suggests such individual influences can affect corporate outcomes. We investigate whether individual managers play an economically...

This study examines the association between CFO equity incentives and earnings management. CEO equity incentives have been shown to be associated with accruals management and the likelihood of beating analyst forecasts (Bergstresser and Philippon, 2006; Cheng and Warfield, 2005). Because CFOs'...

Firms can report comprehensive income in either an income-statement-like performance statement or the statement of equity. Traditional theories of contracting incentives cannot explain this reporting location choice that only affects where comprehensive income data appear, because the...

Early empirical studies find a negative association between firm performance and shareholder activism, whereas more recent studies document a positive association. We argue and theoretically show that this change in behavior results from mandating executive compensation disclosure. We develop a...

We examine whether firms in industries with greater labor mobility exhibit less myopic behavior. Using an occupation-based measure of labor mobility for a large sample of US firms, we show that greater labor mobility is associated with fewer myopic operating decisions. This association is...

We investigate if high-ability managers are more likely to intentionally smooth earnings, a form of earnings management, and when they are more likely to do so. Although prior studies provide evidence that high-ability managers report higher quality earnings, the literature does not indicate...

The paper examines the relationship between share ownership by boards of British stock exchange listed companies and accrual based earnings management. It provides the first empirical evidence that the relationship is impacted by UK Company Law and the institutional governance framework.We...

This paper investigates whether individual top executives have incremental effects on their firms' tax avoidance that cannot be explained by characteristics of the firm. To identify executive effects on firms' effective tax rates, we construct a dataset that tracks the movement of 908 executives...

The incentive effect of CEO portfolio delta (i.e., the sensitivity of CEO wealth to changes in stock price) on financial misreporting is inconclusive given a complex reward-risk tradeoff faced by CEOs (e.g., a positive “reward effect” versus a negative “risk effect”). We propose that the...