This paper identifies segment characteristics that made industry segment reporting more useful in equity valuation. Those characteristics are the difference in segments' growth potential, the relative size of segments, and the magnitude of correlation in segment earnings. Usefulness is measured...

Conservatism is interpreted to mean that accountants more frequently report current quot;bad newsquot; about future cash flows in contemporaneous earnings than current quot;good news.quot; Thus, earnings reported under GAAP should be more timely in reporting quot;bad newsquot; about future cash...

Braun (this issue) argues that the traditional accounting principles underlying the revenue-expense approach such as Historical Cost and Conservatism are ecologically rational in that they help organizations survive better in uncertain economic environments. More importantly, he argues that the...

Sales decreases affect earnings more than sales increases because of cost stickiness. We hypothesize that this correlated omitted variable constitutes a confounding effect in standard asymmetric timeliness models. Controlling for a piecewise linear effect of sales changes in these models...

We study the influence of bank competition on U.S. public borrowers' accounting conservatism by exploiting the staggered adoption of the Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act (IBBEA) of 1994, which increased the threat of new bank entrants and competition. We find that...

Large net loan charge-offs are frequently associated with large decreases in nonperforming loans and large increases in loan loss provisions, inducing a V-shaped relation between loan loss provisions and nonperforming loan changes. Failure to model the asymmetry attributable to net loan...

Large net loan charge-offs are frequently associated with large decreases in nonperforming loans and large increases in loan loss provisions, inducing a V-shaped relation between loan loss provisions and nonperforming loan changes. Failure to model the asymmetry attributable to net loan...

We show that firms' investment opportunity sets (IOS) are multidimensional. Analyzing Form 10-K texts, we identify 445 unique keywords that predict firms' future investments during 1995-2009 and combine them into 43 underlying factors. Industry-specific factors include Bio-Pharma, Banking,...

Adam Smith hypothesized that impersonal exchange was necessary for a society to develop specialized division of labor and create wealth. Douglass North and Vernon Smith argue that successful developed economies are the result of institutions. We hypothesize and provide evidence from ethnographic...