Insider trading conveys insiders' private information to outsiders. This private information potentially benefits rival firms, which may reduce the competitive advantage of the insiders' firms. Using multiple approaches to identify proprietary information risk, we find proprietary costs are...

This paper examines the association between insider trading before an earnings announcement and the magnitude of the post-earnings announcement drift (PEAD). Consistent with insiders' private information being incorporated into prices through their trading, we find PEAD is significantly lower...

We examine how ex ante financial distress risk affects CEO compensation. In order to disentangle the joint effects of performance on compensation and distress risk, we focus our analyses on new CEOs. Our results indicate financial distress risk affects compensation through two channels. First,...

Directors' and officers' (D&O) legal liability insurance is commonly provided to corporate executives and directors. Prior literature suggests managers are more willing to engage in opportunistic behaviors when their personal assets are more protected from litigation risk. Therefore, information...

We provide evidence on the “principles vs. rules” standards debate by examining how changes in cash flow reporting methods required by SFAS 95 Statement of Cash Flows affected firms' information environments. We argue that adoption of SFAS 95 represented a change from a principle based...

We provide evidence that increased reporting frequency enhances the extent to which stock prices guide managers' investment decisions. Using a generalized difference-in-differences research design, we find the sensitivity of investment to stock price increased for Mandatory Adopters following an...

This paper assesses whether two popular accounting-based measures, Altman's (1968) Z-Score and an O-Score derived from Ohlson (1980), effectively summarize publicly-available information about the probability of bankruptcy (PB). According to option-pricing theories (Black and Scholes, 1973,...

We examine the effect of earnings surprises on changes in information asymmetry. We hypothesize and find that asymmetry is lower (higher) in the quarter following positive (negative) earnings surprises compared to firms that meet the consensus analyst earnings forecast. The relations between...