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...

The paper studies the effect of uncertainty in tax avoidance on firm value. We first show in a clean surplus valuation model that expected tax rates interact with expectations about future profitability. This paper builds and tests a valuation framework that incorporates two outcome dimensions...

This study finds that stock return volatility is higher during periods of high tax policy uncertainty (TPU), even after controlling for other sources of general macroeconomic uncertainty. Further, we find that the relation between TPU and stock return volatility is more pronounced where firms...

This study provides evidence concerning the significance of assessing operational control risks as part of an integrative evaluation of internal controls. We examine whether operational control weaknesses can be used as cues to potential unreported financial reporting control weaknesses, and in...

This paper examines the relation between the investment horizon of banks and their CEO compensation, and its consequences for risk and performance. We find that banks with short-term investment intensity pay more cash bonus, exhibit higher risk and perform more poorly than banks with longer-term...

To provide evidence on the role macroeconomic uncertainty plays in managers' decision to issue management earnings forecasts (MFs) this study develops and tests hypotheses about how such uncertainty affects the issuance and characteristics of MFs. Macroeconomic uncertainty is measured using the...

This study uses audit file data to analyze the association between the auditors' preliminary assessments of going-concern and fraud risk and the planning and performance of the financial statement audit. We analyze the association between the above risks and the auditor's assessment of the risk...

This study finds that better reporting quality is associated with less uncertainty about credit risk as captured by disagreement among the credit rating agencies. The results also show that reporting quality is more important in reducing uncertainty when debt market participants have less access...

We propose several econometric measures of connectedness based on principal-components analysis and Granger-causality networks, and apply them to the monthly returns of hedge funds, banks, broker/dealers, and insurance companies. We find that all four sectors have become highly interrelated over...

In this study we examine whether higher levels of tax risk are associated with increased firm risk, as perceived by capital market participants. Given the difficulties of measuring tax risk, we utilize four different proxies that prior research indicates capture greater tax-related uncertainty,...