Although financial reporting fraud generates considerable losses, we find that investors do not fully exploit publicly available information relevant for detecting fraud. We show that firms with a high probability of overstated earnings have lower future earnings, less persistent...

The paper provides evidence that the relation between accruals and future returns is not symmetric. We find that firms with low accruals generate insignificant abnormal returns in asset pricing regressions that control for either earnings quality or operating volatility. In contrast, we find...

The paper examines the relation between the probability of manipulation, accruals, and future returns. We show that firms that have a high likelihood of earnings manipulation (as measured by the Beneish (1999)'s M-Score) experience lower future earnings, but that investors expect these firms to...

Regulation FD recommends press releases as a primary avenue for timely disclosure of material information to market participants. Firms commonly issue product-related and business expansion information through press releases, yet no study examines how analysts respond to these information...

This paper examines the implications of using the absolute value of discretionary accruals when testing for earnings management. First, we analytically develop the mean and variance of the distribution of absolute discretionary accruals, and show that the expected value is an increasing function...