This document is the written testimony submitted to the House Oversight Committee for its hearing on hedge funds and the financial crisis, held November 13, 2008, and is not a formal academic research paper, but is intended for a broader audience of policymakers and regulators. Academic readers...

This study uses trading volume measures to provide a richer understanding of US investors trading in 20-F filers and US market reactions to the reconciliation and disclosures included in 20-F filings. A unique aspect of this study is the inclusion of all 20-F filers, including foreign filers...

This study investigates the association between pension accounting information and both firm value and credit ratings. My findings indicate that fair-value-based pension accounting information is not more evaluation relevant (often termed value relevant in prior literature relating specifically...

This paper investigates whether there is market reaction to and value-relevance of information contained in the mandatory transitional documents required by IFRS 1 (2005). These documents detail the reconciliation adjustments necessary to a firm's previously reported UK GAAP accounts to achieve...

Mispricing and risk have both been suggested as explanations for the cross-sectional relation between stock returns and firm characteristics such as accruals. As emphasized by Ferson and Harvey (1998) and Berk, Green and Naik (1999), it is difficult to evaluate these competing explanations...

There is reliable evidence that managers smooth their reported earnings. If some firms manage earnings downwards (upwards) when they experience large positive (negative) earnings shocks and if investors have cognitive limits or are inattentive, then it is plausible that the post-earnings...

This paper examines how the characteristics of accounting systems and management incentives interact and collectively determine financial reporting quality. We develop a rational expectations equilibrium model that features a steady-state firm with investments, financial and non-financial...

The corporate information environment develops endogenously as a consequence of information asymmetries and agency problems between investors, entrepreneurs, and managers. We provide a framework for analyzing the three main decisions that shape the corporate information environment in a capital...

We find that shorts establish significant positions more than a year before the average restatement announcement, those positions increase as the announcement month approaches, and the largest positions are held in companies that will announce an accounting irregularity that attracts class...

Using a large sample of earnings announcements made by firms belonging to Korean chaebols, we examine propping (i.e., negative tunneling) within a chaebol. Consistent with the market's ex-ante valuation of intra-group propping, we find that the announcement of increased (decreased) earnings over...