Positive accounting theory predicts that conservative financial reporting averts GAAP-based litigation. However, very little empirical evidence addresses whether and how accounting conservatism provides these benefits. Using a sample of lawsuits against public companies for alleged violations of...

We argue that contracting with the federal government involves significant proprietary information cost due to regulations requiring contractors to provide confidential information, which may then become available to outsiders via Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. We provide evidence...

This paper shows that firms near a broad credit rating change, that is, a rating with a plus or minus specification, tend to inflate their reported earnings more than firms that are not near a broad credit rating change. Our measures of earnings inflation are discretionary accruals and...

This paper investigates whether firms have incentives to opportunistically manipulate real activities to meet analysts' cash flow forecasts and the economic consequence of such manipulation. Using the measurements of real activities manipulation from Roychowdhury (2006), I find that shows that...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to study the relationship between institutional holdings and analyst coverage in the context of the heterogeneous nature of institutional investors. Design/methodology/approach – Similar to prior studies (e.g. Ke and Ramalingegowda; Ramalingegowda and...