Prior research finds that mandatory risk factor disclosures are informative in that they increase investors' assessments of the volatility of a firm's cash flows. However, the literature is silent as to whether these disclosures provide information about the level of future cash flows and,...

Regulators have recently expressed concern that existing disclosure rules prevent financial users from fully understanding the location of a firm's operations. In this study, we develop an estimate of the location of firms' cash holdings using financial statement data and validate our estimate...

We examine the association between employee quality and financial reporting outcomes. Using the average workforce education level in MSA(s) where the firm operates as a proxy for employee quality, we find that firms with a high-quality workforce exhibit higher accruals quality, fewer internal...

Theory argues that career concerns (i.e., concerns about the impact of current performance on contemporaneous and future compensation) encourage managers to withhold bad news disclosure. However, empirical evidence regarding the extent to which a manager's career concerns are associated with a...

Using a sample of earnings restatements, we provide evidence that an empirical measure of the comparability in two firms' earnings (“earnings comparability”) captures the extent to which a firm's accounting choices and estimates are similar to those of its restating peer firm. We then...

Whether firms facing greater financing constraints turn to tax strategies that generate lower cash effective tax rates (ETRs) to mitigate the adverse effect of these financing constraints remains an empirical question of interest. We use the Pension Protection Act of 2006 (PPA 2006) as an...

Prior research argues that one reason firms engage in corporate spinoffs is to increase firm value by reducing information asymmetry with shareholders (the “information hypothesis”). However, the literature has yet to identify a mechanism through which this reduction in information asymmetry...

We investigate the stock market's reaction to events leading up to the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) and Public Company Accounting Oversight Board's (PCAOB) 2007 regulatory changes that reduced the scope of and documentation requirements for assessments of firms' internal controls...

Prior research finds that unrealized gains/losses on cash flow hedges are negatively associated with future earnings, and that investors and analysts fail to anticipate this association. These studies speculate that this mispricing is due to either poor derivatives disclosures or the accounting...

Regulation Fair Disclosure (Reg FD) Form 8-K filings provide a venue where managers release information to the market as a whole that they designate as being material. Using this setting, we study trading patterns immediately prior to the public disclosure of material information. We offer three...