Over the last thirty years, numerous parties have discussed whether CEOs and CFOs should certify the appropriateness of their financial statements. Despite the interest in this issue, there is limited empirical research on whether a voluntary disclosure system for CEO\CFO certifications provides...

Existing research documents that firms employing relatively high levels of stock option-based compensation more frequently report quarterly earnings that meet or exceed analysts' forecasts. This paper examines the roles of income-increasing accounting choices and management guidance to analysts...

To curb opportunism in financial reporting, scholars and regulators have proposed that firms be required to report reconciliations of prior year estimates. We provide experimental evidence that such disclosures are not sufficient for non-professional investors to identify those firms that are...

Managerial behavior differs considerably when managers report quarterly profits versus losses. When they report profits, managers seek to just meet or slightly beat analyst estimates. When they report losses, managers do not attempt to meet or slightly beat analyst estimates. Instead, managers...

This study explores insider trading as a function of differences between managers' and the market's assessment of company earning components - specifically operating cash flows and accruals. It extends prior research by more comprehensively studying earnings components. It also builds a...

Using a sample of seventy-two firms that adopted fresh start reporting upon their emergence from Chapter 11 bankruptcy, I test whether management estimates of fresh start equity values are misstated and whether such misstatements are related to characteristics of individual firms' bankruptcy...

We study labor unions, an important stakeholder group that has not been a focus of the earnings smoothing literature. We posit that managers strike a balance between sheltering resources from employees’ profit sharing demands and catering to employees’ aversion to downside risk by smoothing...

We investigate if high-ability managers are more likely to intentionally smooth earnings, a form of earnings management, and when they are more likely to do so. Although prior studies provide evidence that high-ability managers report higher quality earnings, the literature does not indicate...

We discuss the role and economic significance of the last-in, first-out (LIFO) inventory accounting method in the current tax system, both as a matter of practice and of policy. After examining the traditional justifications for LIFO we argue that LIFO, as it is administered, is inconsistent...

This study examines the predictive power of comprehensive income and its individual components within the homogenous institutional setting of German IFRS firms. The results could be relevant for the standard setters IASB and FASB and their joint project “Financial Statement Presentation”. We...