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...

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...

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...

If overstatements were a symptom of the agency conflict, pay-for-performance sensitivities should have increased in response to the additional penalties for misreporting imposed by SOX. Our finding of their decrease is inconsistent with the view that overstatements were an unintended consequence...

This paper analyzes the impact of signal-to-noise-ratios and the autocorrelation of a performance measure on the principal's welfare in dynamic agencies with renegotiation. We consider the impact of changes in the persistent, transitory, and reversible components of accounting earnings on its...

This paper make four important contributions to the accounting literature. First, it shows that discretionary accruals are associated with CEO cash compensation, but that the coefficient is significantly less than that on nondiscretionary accruals. Second, a differential reaction is found to...

Existing research documents that firms employing relatively high levels of stock option-based compensation more frequently report quarterly earnings that meet or exceed analysts' forecasts. This paper examines the roles of income-increasing accounting choices and management guidance to analysts...

Managers in their terminal years have an incentive to manipulate earnings to enhance earnings based bonuses. We examine this horizon problem by considering the role of the compensation committee in setting terminal-year compensation. We predict that compensation committees are aware of the...

Equity-based compensation causes increases in firms' share count and dilutes Earnings Per Share (EPS), which provides firms with an incentive to raise EPS using either share buybacks or earnings management. We employ a regression discontinuity framework to provide evidence of a causal link...

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...