This paper investigates the usage, determinants and earnings effect of special purpose entities based on a large sample of firms from 1994 to 2004. We find that SPE use has grown substantially in recent years and that the number of SPEs is related to economic motivations, financial reporting...

This study investigates whether glamour companies have higher effective tax rates than value companies. Glamour companies are defined using a Lakonishok et al. (1994) definition as companies that have a high price-to-earnings ratio and high sales growth. Conversely, value companies have a low...

U.S. firms are afforded the opportunity to characterize profits to capital markets and tax authorities in distinct ways. How does the latitude afforded managers influence the quality of these corporate profit reports? This paper traces the evolution of the dual reporting system and assesses its...

This paper presents evidence on derivatives usage by Brazilian non-financial firms, using a sample of 74 companies. The proportion of firms using derivatives in Brazil is comparable to that of other countries already researched. There are economies of scale for derivatives usage, and managers...

Income reported to shareholders (book income) and income reported to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (taxable income) are alternative measures of U.S. corporate economic performance discussed in recent research, academic texts, and by U.S. legislators. In measuring economic performance,...

In the context of the statutory tax rate reductions enacted in the Tax Reform Act of 1986, this paper investigates the degree to which capital market participants anticipate and correctly interpret temporary income effects of tax-motivated income shifting. We find evidence consistent with...

This paper examines whether stock option grants explain missed earnings targets, including reported losses, earnings declines and missed analysts' forecasts. Anecdotal evidence and surveys suggest that managers believe that missing an earnings target can cause stock-price drops (Graham, et al....

I investigate the role of book-tax differences in indicating the persistence of earnings, accruals, and cash flows for one-period-ahead earnings. I also examine whether the level of book-tax differences influences investors' assessments of future earnings persistence. I find that firm-years with...

United States multinational corporations can delay financial statement recognition of U.S. taxes on repatriations by designating foreign subsidiary earnings as quot;permanently reinvestedquot; under APB Opinion No. 23. This paper examines 1) whether firms use the permanently reinvested earnings...

I present evidence consistent with managers using derivatives and discretionary accruals as partial substitutes for smoothing earnings. Using 1994-1996 data for a sample of Fortune 500 firms, I estimate a set of simultaneous equations that captures managers' incentives to maintain a desired...