We contribute to the debate regarding the informativeness of pro forma earnings disclosures by providing evidence that a group of informed traders, short sellers, trade as if firms' voluntary non-GAAP earnings disclosures create information advantages they can exploit. While prior research...

The objective of this study is to investigate factors that influence investor information demand around earnings announcements and to provide insights into how variation in information demand impacts the capital market response to earnings. The internet is one channel through which public...

Using a novel dataset that tracks all web traffic on the SEC's EDGAR servers from 2008-2011, we examine the determinants and capital market consequences of investor information acquisition of SEC filings. The average user employs the database very few times per quarter and most users target...

The internet is an enormous and growing source of information for investors about the opinions of others. Virtually any individual with internet access can express opinions about firms and editorialize about company news. However, to date we know very little about the impact these nontraditional...

Changing economic conditions over the past two decades have created incentives for sell-side analysts to both provide their institutional clients tiered services and to streamline their written research process. One manifestation of these changes is an increased likelihood of analysts' issuing...

We survey a broad group of professionals who use financial statements as part of their job to assess the extent to which they believe financial reports suffer from disclosure overload. Consistent with the claims made by regulators, auditors, and preparers, we find that a significant portion of...

In this study, we examine whether investors' actions to acquire accounting information are predictive of future firm performance because these actions partially reveal investors' private expectations of this performance. Using a database of EDGAR downloads, we find some evidence that information...

The internet is an enormous and growing source of information for investors about the opinions of others. Virtually any individual with internet access can express opinions about firms and editorialize about company news. However, to date we know very little about the impact these...

We examine whether policy uncertainty triggered by presidential elections pushes the future back by reducing the extent to which current prices reflect information about future earnings. We estimate future earnings response coefficients (FERCs) for the years 1975-2013, a period that covers ten...

We investigate whether auditors are sensitive to litigation risk related specifically to having greater numbers of institutional investors that hold the common stock of a given client. Our findings suggest that audit fees are higher when the number of institutional investors holding stock in the...