This study investigates the development of income-decreasing discretionary expenses surrounding CEO turnovers at banks. We expect incoming CEOs to take an earnings bath during the initial stage of their tenure. For a sample of German banks over the period 1993-2012, we document that (1) incoming...

Prior research shows that firms generating earnings growth by improving profitability create shareholder value, while firms generating earnings growth through investment destroy value. This paper examines whether compensation committees consider this while determining CEO compensation. We first...

We examine how the provision of quarterly earnings guidance is affected by constraints on earnings management. We argue that costs of falling short of one's own guidance make managers reluctant to issue guidance without sufficient flexibility in their financial reporting system to manage...

This study investigates whether information about Chief Executive Officer (CEO) incentives is useful for predicting future earnings. We find that in companies with higher CEO equity incentives, current year earnings are more informative of future earnings than in other companies. Additionally,...

This paper compares and contrasts two accounting information systems, the aggregate earnings system and the disaggregated cash flow/accrual system, examining their relative performance in stock valuation and in forecasting of earnings. It finds, in general, that the forecasts of earnings and...

The relation between aggregate earnings and aggregate returns is complex and not fully understood. For example, in contrast to firm-level relations, prior literature finds aggregate earnings changes and aggregate stock returns are negatively related. This paper constructs new measures of...

Compensation committees face special difficulties when setting pay in the last years of a CEO's tenure. For example, incentives to manipulate earnings for the purpose of enhancing earnings-based compensation are greater in CEOs' terminal years. We predict that compensation committees are aware...

Kato & Long (2005) state that executive compensation has attracted much attention from economists in the past two decades yet most academic work on executive compensation has been concentrated on a few developed countries such as the U.S. and the U.K., mainly due to data availability. In light...

The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis produces a measure of aggregate corporate profits (NIPA earnings), which is an integral component of the accounting for GDP. The key advantage of NIPA earnings is rigorous determination with no earnings management and no political meddling; other advantages...

A substantial body of prior research investigates how skills and attributes of upper management affect firm policies and performance, but the impact of workers outside of upper management has received little attention due to scarcity of data involving lower-level workers. We propose that...