We commemorate the 50th anniversary of Ball and Brown by chronicling its impact on capital market research in accounting. We trace the evolution of various research paths that post–Ball and Brown researchers took as they sought to build on the foundation laid by Ball and Brown to create a body...

We show that the agency theory of overvalued equity (see Jensen, 2005) rather than investors' fixation on accruals explains the accrual anomaly, i.e., abnormal returns to an accrual trading strategy (see Sloan, 1996).Under the agency theory of overvalued equity, managers of overvalued firms are...

We study the stock market reaction to aggregate earnings news. Previous research shows that, for individual firms, stock prices react positively to earnings news but require several quarters to fully reflect the information in earnings. We find that the relation between returns and earnings is...

International differences in the demand for accounting income predictably affect the way it incorporates economic income (dividend-adjusted change in market value) over time. We characterize the quot;shareholderquot; and quot;stakeholderquot; corporate governance models of common and code law...

We examine how personal taxes affect CEOs' decision to sell their vested equity and compare it against diversification, managerial overconfidence and other determinants of CEOs' sale of equity. While CEOs frequently sell large amounts of their unrestricted firm equity, we find that the tax...

We show that the greater the extent to which a performance measure matches delivered performance, the simpler and more robust are the compensation plans based on it. In some settings stock price changes match delivered performance poorly because they anticipate it. This introduces three problems...

We document frequent and large selling of equity by CEOs. Such selling is designed not simply to offset the current year grant of options and stock. We find that the tax burden associated with the sale and (various measures of CEO) overconfidence both decrease CEOs' propensity to sell their...

The number of published event studies exceeds 500, and the literature continues to grow. We provide an overview of event study methods. Short-horizon methods are quite reliable. While long-horizon methods have improved, serious limitations remain. A challenge is to continue to refine...

Prior research shows that extant discretionary accrual models are misspecified when applied to firms with extreme performance. Nonetheless, use of such models in tests of earnings management and market efficiency is commonplace in the literature. We examine the specification and power of the...

We show that compensation contracts based on measures of Delivered performance are less costly to shareholders. We compare stock-price changes, earnings, and cash flows as performance measures, and predict that each measure's use in contracts will increase in its contemporaneous correlation with...