Firms with greater product market power have more slack in their decision making because they are able to, at least partially, insulate their cash flows and earnings realizations from shocks to their economic state relative to other firms. Using the period 1993 through 2010, and multiple proxies...

This study develops an ex-ante measure of firms' overall tax risk, allowing us to classify a firm as pursuing a more or less risky tax strategy relative to other firms, and examines the distribution of tax outcomes associated with levels of tax risk. Our study is important because tax...

We investigate whether the sustainability of firms' tax strategies is associated with corporate transparency. We expect and find that firms with sustainable tax strategies are associated with more transparent information environments. Prior research shows that transparency is associated with...

We posit and find that the importance of analyst and forecast characteristics for analyst forecast accuracy varies with analysts' access to management's private information and with the precision of publicly available information. In particular, more experienced analysts and All-Star analysts do...

Product market power provides firms with comparative advantages through more persistent profitability and insulation from competitive threats. These advantages likely provide firms with the ability to engage in greater tax avoidance. We present evidence consistent with this hypothesis. We also...

This study develops and validates an ex-ante measure of firm-specific overall tax risk. We define tax risk as the potential that current actions or activities, or the failure to take actions or pursue activities, will lead to future tax outcomes that are different from expectations. Tax risk...

Prior research has established that from 2000 to 2007, auditors incorporated clients' financial reporting risk in their pricing of audit engagements (Charles et al. 2010; Doogar et al. 2010, 2013). However, regulators have expressed concern that the economic downturn and pressure from clients to...

Research in economics, finance, and management describes a new type of firm and a new way of doing business - the “new economy business model” - that has been reshaping the U.S. economy since at least the mid 1980's. We extend this research and develop a composite measure of this model,...

In this study, we investigate whether companies with better reputations enjoy a lower cost of equity financing. Using a sample of 9,276 large U.S. companies from 1987 through 2011 and the reputation rankings from Fortune's “America's Most Admired Companies List”, we find strong evidence that...

Results have been mixed regarding whether, and how much, board of director connectedness is beneficial to firm value. Some prior research shows that overly busy directors are ineffective monitors, but these same “busy” directors can be valuable sources of information and other resources. For...