Prior research on meeting or beating earnings expectations focuses on managers' incentives to keep stock prices inflated by avoiding negative earnings surprises. However, in certain situations, managers may be motivated to depress stock prices in order to maximize their utility. We hypothesize...

We investigate patterns of earnings management by the acquiring firm in a merger, considering both the form of payment and the target firm's listing status. We find that the acquiring firm is more likely to report income-increasing abnormal accruals when it uses stock to acquire a privately held...

This study extends previous research that documents a stock price reaction leading accounting earnings. The primary issue is that prior studies use a naive earnings expectations model (random walk) as the benchmark for the information content of lagged returns and do not adequately address the...