We survey 401 financial executives, and conduct in-depth interviews with an additional 20, to determine the key factors that drive decisions related to reported earnings and voluntary disclosure. The majority of firms view earnings, especially EPS, as the key metric for outsiders, even more so...

We find that fixed effects related to the location of firms' headquarters explain variation in broad based option grants after controlling for industry effects and firm characteristics traditionally known to affect option granting. Location matters because of local labor market conditions and...

Several recent papers assume that private information (PIN), proposed by Easley et al. [2002. Is information risk a determinant of asset returns? Journal of Finance 57, 2185-2221; 2004. Factoring information into returns. Working Paper, Cornell University], is a determinant of stock returns. We...