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...

We examine how the threat of litigation affects an entrepreneur's reporting behavior when the entrepreneur (i) can misrepresent his privately observed information, (ii) pays legal damages out of his own pocket, and (iii) is optimistic about the firm's prospects relative to investors. We find...

While some of the modern performance measures used in managerial accounting rely on cash flow based figures others try to take advantage of the information content of accounting figures. However, whether the additional information content in the accrual components of earnings improves the...

Prior research has documented the continued existence of an expectation gap, defined as the divergence between the public's and the profession's conceptions of auditor's duties, despite the auditing profession's attempt to adopt standards and practices to close this gap. In this paper, we...

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...

Accounting big baths are pervasive in practice. While big baths can improve the information environment and reduce information asymmetry, they can also degrade the information environment and obscure operating performance. In this study, we examine the role of management ethics. Specifically, we...

This paper provides early but broad empirical evidence on a major new investor protection regulation in Europe, MiFID II, which requires investment firms to unbundle investment research from other costs they charge to clients. We predict that the price separation resulting from unbundling and a...

Prior to 2018, U.S. repatriation taxes motivated companies to retain cash offshore. Using confidential jurisdiction-specific data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, we find that firms with high tax-induced foreign cash have approximately 3.3 percent higher domestic liabilities relative to...

This study examines how an increase in tick size affects algorithmic trading (AT), fundamental information acquisition (FIA), and the price discovery process around earnings announcements (EAs). Leveraging the SECs randomized Tick Size Pilot experiment, we show a tick size increase results in a...