In 1995 Congress passed the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act (PSLRA), which grants public companies a safe harbor from liability for forward-looking statements (FLS). Because investors cannot reasonably assess the legitimacy of forward-looking information for initial public offerings...

I examine the role of financial covenants in private debt contracts. I predict that financial covenants help limit ex ante uncertainty about the borrower's performance - the risk that the borrower will default on the loan - in the contract. I find that covenant inclusion is positively related to...

While some of the modern performance measures used in managerial accounting rely on cash flow based figures others try to take advantage of the information content of accounting figures. However, whether the additional information content in the accrual components of earnings improves the...

Expenditures on creation of intangible capital have increased but accounting standards have not kept pace. We investigate whether this has affected the value relevance of book value and earnings. We construct a composite measure of intangible intensity based on intangible assets capitalized on...

We examine whether economic links with major customers, an important group of strong stakeholders, act as a deterrent to corporate misconduct. We show that firms with a concentrated customer base are less likely to commit misconduct and face lower penalties. These findings hold with numerous...

Firms make extensive use of operating leases, but unlike other types of debt, their balance sheet value is set by the firm. Using novel information on operating leases from new reporting requirements (ASC 842) we examine firm behavior in valuing these leases, specifically, discount rate choices....

The computation of implied cost of capital (ICC) is constrained by the lack of analyst forecasts for half of all firms. Hou, van Dijk, and Zhang (2012, HVZ) present a cross-sectional model to generate forecasts in order to compute ICC. However, the forecasts from the HVZ model perform worse than...

Prior research finds that the decline in the information content of earnings after restatement announcements is short-lived and the earnings response coefficient (ERC) bounces back after three quarters. We re-examine this issue using a more recent and comprehensive sample of restatements. We...

This paper contrasts technical default, debt service default and bankruptcy, and establishes that the valuation effects of their announcements are significant and increasingly severe. We show the events are interrelated. That is, technical default increases the likelihood of future debt service...

This paper investigates the impact of financial structure on firm value in the United Arab Emirates emerging market. Financial statements of a stratified random sample of unlisted food firms are analyzed during period 1996-2000. Empirical results show that debt to equity ratio has no impact on...