We analyze the quality of forward-looking information in the management reports (MR) of listed German corporations and the impact of differences in that quality on analysts' behaviour. For several years, German corporations are bounded to provide forward-looking information separately for the...

Over the past 12 years, financial analysts across the world have been optimistically wrong with their 12-month earnings forecasts by 25.3%. This study may be the first of its kind to assess analyst earnings forecast accuracy at all listed companies across the globe, covering 70 countries. A...

Our study explores how managerial stock holdings and option holdings affect CEOs' income smoothing incentives. Given the different roles of stock holdings and option holdings in solving agency problems, managers may smooth past earnings using discretionary accruals for the purpose of revealing...

Using a novel dataset, we show that components of firms' GAAP earnings stemming from ancillary business activities or transitory shocks are significant in frequency and magnitude. These components have grown over time and are dispersed across various sections of the 10-K. Excluding them from...

This study provides novel evidence on the magnitude of switching costs in auditing. We use a discrete choice approach to infer switching costs from clients' auditor choices. The demand estimation reveals that switching costs matter and that they differ by the direction with switching from...

This paper investigates irregularities in financial statements by applying the Beneish and Roxas models to Polish firms listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange from 2015 to 2020. The total sample included 110 observations. The sample comprised companies that had received an adverse or disclaimer...

Seasonalities in asset returns, including the January effect, the Halloween effect and the same-calendar-month effect, are widely documented in the literature. We show that a number of popular factors in the empirical asset pricing literature exhibit some well-known seasonalities. Most of the...

Using monthly and quarterly cross-sectional dispersion in firm level earnings news as a proxy for investor uncertainty about the implications of current aggregate earnings for future discount rates, I find that higher investor uncertainty leads to a lower stock market reaction to aggregate...

We present a theoretical and empirical analysis of the fitness of national German (German Commercial Code - Handelsgesetzbuch (HGB)) and international (IAS and US-GAAP) accounting information, as well as European patent data to explain the market values of German manufacturing firms. For the...

The recent financial scandals, backdating problems, expensing of options and increasing use of restricted stocks have affected the cash dividend payout policies of firms, especially of those issuing restricted stocks. This research examines the accounting, financial and demographic variables...