The allegation that activist investors demand changes that increase short-term stock prices at the expense of long-term shareholder value (“short-termism”) has led to extensive research on interventions by hedge funds. Few studies include other private (non-hedge fund) activists, even though...

Accounting is imperfect, leading to errors in financial reporting. This paper links accounting errors to firms' incentives to bias reported earnings. We hypothesize that while errors discourage reporting bias by lowering earnings' value relevance, they also incentivize bias by providing...

Errors and bias are both inherent features of accounting. In theory, while errors discourage bias by lowering the value relevance of accounting, they can also facilitate bias by providing camouflage. Consistent with theory, we find a hump-shaped relation between a firm's propensity to engage in...

We study the extent to which market participants are informed about firms' political connections when the connections are not publicly disclosed and how it affects pricing efficiency. Using a sample of public announcements of government officials' corruption investigations, we find that, on...

On June 27, 2002, the SEC ordered the CEOs and CFOs of public companies with revenues during their last fiscal year of greater than $1.2 billion to file written statements, under oath, regarding the accuracy of their companies' financial statements. The SEC's order required the sworn statements...

In June 2008, a study by Sen confirmed previous findings that 10b5-1 insider stock sale programs (quot;plan salesquot;) are conducted after unusual price run ups, but Sen also found that, in months subsequent to plan sales, stock performance then essentially matched the market. Sen's results on...

The current study briefly considers KLA-Tencor's 2007 $750 million accelerated stock repurchase (ASR). Companies commonly indicate ASRs contractually promise execution of stock buybacks at a discount to market. To the contrary, analysis of a small sample of 2006-2007 ASRs finds:1) Inferior...

The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) has long recognized shortcomings in fundamental accounting principles that are exacerbated by the proliferation of increasingly complex financial instruments. The FASB has been engaged since 1986 in a project to align financial reporting with...

Prior research on the cross-country variation of accounting choices induced by managerial incentives to extract private benefits is limited in its use of accounting measures that have limited empirical correlations with direct estimates of private control benefits. This study attempts to resolve...