We synthesize the growing literature on asymmetric cost behavior — a new way of thinking about costs and, by extension, earnings. While the traditional cost behavior model describes a mechanistic relation between activity and costs, this alternative view recognizes the primitives of cost...

We develop new distribution discontinuity tests conditional on multiple explanatory variables for analyzing meet-or-just-beat behavior around benchmarks. These tests combine Burgstahler and Dichev's (1997) meet-or-just-beat intuition with a flexible statistical model that addresses important...