Little is known about why CEOs voluntarily purchase shares of their firm other than because they expect to directly profit from doing so. However, since CEOs are risk-averse, highly un-diversified, and face litigation costs from trading on favorable private information, direct profits are...

This paper examines whether CEO stock-based compensation has an effect on the market's ability to predict future earnings. When stock-based compensation motivates managers to share their private information with shareholders, it will expedite the pricing of future earnings in current stock...

We examine the effect of litigation risk on management's decision to issue earnings forecasts. We use a new ex ante measure of litigation risk, namely, the Directors and Officers liability insurance premium. This measure bypasses significant problems associated with the estimation of ex ante...

This paper provides empirical evidence that Croatian companies manage reported earnings to avoid losses and earnings declines. Specifically, we find that the cross-sectional distribution of scaled earnings and changes in earnings show high frequencies of small positive earnings and small...

We empirically examine the joint predictions of the pecking order theory and the theory of time-varying asymmetric information regarding the timing of security offerings around information disclosures. We analyze loan originations and bond offerings around earnings announcements and compare them...

We use highly granular computational linguistics to assess the MD&A section of the 10-K as a whole. Our results show that the content of MD&A can be systematically used to explain the valuation of firms, particularly those undergoing business change, where the value relevance of financial...

We examine whether the level of trust in a country affects investors' perception and utilization of information transmitted by firms through financial disclosure. Specifically, we investigate the effect of societal trust on investor reactions to corporate earnings announcements. We test two...

Prior research shows that firms generating earnings growth by improving profitability create shareholder value, while firms generating earnings growth through investment destroy value. This paper examines whether compensation committees consider this while determining CEO compensation. We first...

We provide empirical evidence that managers smooth earnings using discretionary R&D spending (i.e., real smoothing) when managerial compensation packages contain high risk-taking incentives. Specifically, we find that real smoothing is related to both the sensitivity of executive wealth to a...

We examine how corporate insiders profit from private information about future earnings performance through SEC Rule 10b5-1 trading plans. We first provide evidence consistent with insiders using 10b5-1 plans to sell stock in advance of disappointing earnings results. We then examine insiders...