We examine the effect of personal taxes on CEOs’ decisions to sell their equity, controlling for diversification, managerial overconfidence, and other determinants. While CEOs frequently sell large amounts of their unrestricted firm equity, the tax burden associated with the sale significantly...

We evaluate the influence of measurement error in analysts' forecasts on the accuracy of implied cost of capital estimates from various implementations of the ‘implied cost of capital' approach, and develop corrections for the measurement error. The implied cost of capital approach relies on...

We evaluate the influence of measurement error in analysts' forecasts on the accuracy of implied cost of capital estimates from various implementations of the ‘implied cost of capital' approach, and develop corrections for the measurement error. We document predictable error in the implied...

Investors, regulators, academics, and researchers all emphasize the importance of financial statement comparability. However, an empirical construct of comparability is typically not specified. In addition, little evidence exists on the benefits of comparability to users. This study attempts to...

The concept of conditional conservatism has provided new insight into financial reporting and has stimulated considerable research since Basu (1997) developed it. While the concept encapsulated in the adage “anticipate no profits but anticipate all losses” is reasonably clear, estimating it...

The advent of the Great Recession in 2008 was the culmination of a perfect storm of lax regulation, a growing housing bubble, rising popularity of derivatives instruments, and questionable banking practices. In addition to these causes, management incentives, as well as certain US accounting...

We show real effects in the banking sector that emanate from transparency in the industrial sector. Transparent financial reporting by industrial firms facilitates access to arm's-length financing from capital markets and diminishes these firms' reliance on banks. Banks, as a result, face...

A popular focus of research in the area of private equity (PE) portfolio management has been the quest for successful ex-ante identification of individual private equity funds (or “manager selection” within a portfolio). Outside of that, much of the existing research has mainly focused on...

A substantial literature investigates conditional conservatism, defined as asymmetric accounting recognition of economic shocks ("news"), and how it depends on various market, political, and institutional variables. Studies typically assume the Basu [1997] asymmetric timeliness coefficient (the...

The convention in corporate financial disclosures, ExecuComp, and academic research is to treat the fair value of equity grants to CEOs as compensation for performance in the year of the grant. In contrast, we provide evidence that equity awards, which constitute a dominant share of CEO pay, are...