For decades, the economic theory of the firm referred to as agency theory has dominated business research and education in the United States. Although agency theory has been influential in accounting, finance, and managerial economics, it lacks informal and nonfinancial controls. Douglas E....

This paper presents a model that relates properties of the analysts' information environment to the properties of their forecasts. First, we express forecast dispersion and error in the mean forecast in terms of analyst uncertainty and consensus (that is, the degree to which analysts share a...

This study investigates determinants of budgetary slack using the framework of agency theory and the methods of experimental economics. A computerized, five-period experiment is designed to test the robustness of prior experimental results documenting budgeting behavior inconsistent with...

In this paper we model return-earnings regressions in a setting in which analysts' forecasts are used to proxy for investors' expectations. We show how disparites between investors' and analysts' information sets could affect the regression coefficients and the R2. Our findings provide new and...

This study provides evidence regarding the effects of online trading on stock market reactions to quarterly earnings announcements. We test for differences in stock price and volume reactions to quarterly earnings announcements between a period with a significant amount of online trading...

Growing calls for expanded disclosure on managerial stewardship raise important questions about how finer (i.e., disaggregated) reporting, when paired with discretion over classification, will influence managerial behavior. To study this question, we develop an investment game in which, if the...