Putting an end to the “earnings game” requires that CEOs reclaim the initiative by avoiding earnings guidance and managing expectations in such a way that their stocks trade reasonably close to their intrinsic value. In place of earnings forecasts, management should provide information about...

This paper studies the effect of an internal control problem on a firm’s disclosure policy where firms compete in non-cooperative investment game, with each firm deciding to invest in its current technology or to invest in a non-proprietary innovation. By adopting the innovation, a firm earns...

This paper studies the effect of an internal control problem on a firm’s disclosure policy where firms compete in non-cooperative investment game, with each firm deciding to invest in its current technology or to invest in a non-proprietary innovation. By adopting the innovation, a firm earns...

We investigate the relationship between cost stickiness and management earnings forecasts. Prior research suggests that earnings are more volatile for sticky cost firms resulting in greater earnings forecast errors. The greater forecast errors might increase investors' demand for information and...

We examine the effects of mandating compensation disclosure on executive incentive contracts, earnings management, firm value, and social welfare. We develop a moral hazard model with multiple principal-agent pairs facing an external monitor who allocates resources across firms to verify...

Prior studies identify several motives for why firms release management earnings forecasts (MFs). A common feature of such studies is they pool MFs when drawing inferences about a specific motive. By ignoring the heterogeneous rationales managers have to issue MFs, pooling could lead to biased...

The relationship between sustainability performance and sustainability disclosure remains ambiguous, both theoretically and empirically. Voluntary disclosure theory would suggest that the relationship should be positive, whereas legitimacy theory points toward a negative relationship. However,...

This paper explores the relationship between disclosing corporate targets and value creation. Our empirical results show the value relevance of voluntarily disclosing a low number of targets, whereas there is a clear additional positive effect of disclosing exactly one corporate target in the...

Can corporate governance ratings reduce problems of asymmetric information between companies and investors? To answer this question, we set out to examine the information basis for providing such ratings by reviewing corporate governance attributes that are required or recommended in laws,...

Prior research generally argues that managers issue management earnings forecasts (MFs) to secure capital market benefits (i.e., reduce information asymmetry between managers and investors to lower a firm's cost of capital), to reduce the firm's litigation costs, or to allow managers to trade...