This report updates and expands earlier studies to look at the profitability of $349.7 billion of buybacks executed from 2000 through early 2010 by a sample of 275 corporations. The sample companies, drawn mainly from the technology sector, enjoy total equity market value today of $945.6...

Few purely financial decisions rival stock repurchase programs in their bearing on the well-being of shareholders. Absent better financial reports on buybacks, an occasional tally of results seems appropriate. The current “Monitor” extends an earlier study back to 2000 to look at...

We examine the information content of earnings components conditional on the existence of misclassification of earnings in the income statement. We develop a vector autoregression (VAR) of a set of accounting variables that accommodates, besides other variables, two components of transitory...

We investigate the relationship between private firms’ disclosures and the demand for the equity of their publicly traded peers. Using data on the global movement of public equity, we find that a one standard deviation increase in private firm disclosure transparency – proxied by the number...

The media commonly gauges a firm's performance by comparing its performance to others within the same industry. We provide evidence that investors and analysts positively value improvements to the firm's relative performance ranking (RPR) within its industry. Consistently, RPR is positively...

This study constructs a novel measure that aims to capture face-to-face private communications between firm managers and sell-side analysts by mapping detailed, large-volume taxi trip records from New York City to the GPS coordinates of companies and brokerages. Consistent with earnings releases...

Corporate spinoffs are important events that are accompanied by valuation and credit-risk implications for the parent firm. Among other benefits, spinoffs can improve corporate focus and enhance valuation transparency. In the debt-contracting context, however, spinoffs can also lead to potential...

“Modern” accounting adheres to 15th century conventions in maintaining that corporate stock repurchases never result in a profit or loss for a firm. In actual practice, however, few purely financial decisions rival stock repurchases in their bearing on the well-being of shareholders. Because...

We investigate the relationship between private firms’ disclosures and the demand for the equity of their publicly traded peers. Using data on the global movement of public equity, we find that a one standard deviation increase in private firm disclosure transparency – proxied by the number...

Corporate spinoffs are important events that are accompanied by valuation and credit-risk implications for the parent firm. Among other benefits, spinoffs can improve corporate focus and enhance valuation transparency. In the debt-contracting context, however, spinoffs can also be associated...