This article offers a model that articulates how the capitalization of costs affects contemporaneous earnings and the growth path of expected earnings. It makes three points. First, reported earnings under successful efforts are more price-relevant than earnings under full costing or full...

How does the presence of a growth option affect expected earnings growth? This paper analyzes a firm with one growth option and an accrual accounting policy that, in the absence of a growth option, would equate accounting earnings to Hicksian earnings. Under this accounting policy, the presence...

The concept of residual income has become popular in recent years due, in part, to the Ohlson 1995 article on residual income valuation. Since Ohlson assumed clean surplus accounting in that article, the concept of residual income and clean surplus accounting have become intimately linked in the...

Numerous findings in the literature suggest that paying cash dividend mitigates agency problem between majority shareholders and minority shareholders. Many common law countries require mandatory cash dividend policy to protect minority shareholder's interest. This paper provides opposite...

This paper examines the shareholders' perceptions of the costs and benefits associated with the use of pooling-of-interests by investigating the market's reaction to the SEC's adoption of SAB 96. This regulation forced firms to choose between using pooling-of-interests and maintaining their...

Do you believe that bank shareholder equity provides an indefinitely lasting source of funding which covers for (residual) risk and loss-absorption? Our innovative approach clarifies and disentangles actual shareholder contribution to bank equity. This case study applies it to Deutsche Bank, a...

This paper examines whether dividend policy is associated with earnings management and whether the relationship varies across countries with wide-ranging degrees of institutional strength and transparency. Based on a sample of 23,429 corporations from 29 countries, we show that dividend payers...

It is time for accounting to recognize the existence of stock exchanges and stop treating the equity accounts of public corporations as if they belonged to 15th century private partnerships. When Pacioli's codification of the principles of accounting was published in 1494, stock exchanges did...

Using a unique dataset provided by Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), we relate 51 governance provisions to firm operating performance as proxied by return on assets and return on equity. We show that seven (six) governance provisions are significantly and positively related to return on...

Using a unique dataset provided by Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), we relate 51 governance provisions to firm operating performance as proxied by return on assets and return on equity. We identify six corporate governance provisions that are significantly and positively linked to...