We examine the effect of capitalization vs expensing on UK firms' R&D expenditures. Our investigation is motivated by the UK's mandatory switch from UK GAAP to IFRS in 2005. Under UK GAAP, firms could elect to expense or capitalize development expenditures, but IFRS mandates capitalization....

This paper uses a new approach to examine whether income smoothing garbles earnings information or improves the informativeness of past and current earnings about future earnings and cash flows. We measure income smoothing by the negative correlation of a firm s change in discretionary accruals...

This paper presents a new approach to studying the effects of earnings management, by testing whether income smoothing, a particular form of earnings management, is associated with more informative stock prices. Stock price informativeness is defined as the amount of information about future...

This paper compares the value relevance of book value and dividends versus book value and reported earnings. Our work is motivated by recent research including Ohlson (1995), Feltham and Ohlson (1995), Bernard (1995), Burgstahler and Dichev (1997), Collins, Maydew and Weiss (1997), Barth, Beaver...

This paper presents both a new approach to studying the consequences of accounting choice and a unique sample to examine the effects of accounting choice in the Ramp;D context. We investigate the effect of firms decision to capitalize Ramp;D expenditures on the amount of information about future...

We investigate whether the market prices the change in net trading assets as an operating or non-operating activity or some mixture of the two, and whether this market pricing is consistent with the (fundamental) association of the change in net trading assets with future cash flows from...

We examine earnings management behavior around SEOs, focusing on both real activities and accrual-based manipulation, and how this behavior varies over time and cross-sectionally. Although research has addressed the issues of earnings management around SEOs and earnings management via real...

We examine earnings management behavior around SEOs, focusing on both realactivities and accrual-based manipulation, and how this behavior varies over time andcross-sectionally. Although research has addressed the issues of earnings managementaround SEOs and earnings management via real...

We examine how heterogeneity in organizational structure affects private firm earnings quality in the European Union. Organizational structure refers to whether the firm is organized as a single legal entity (standalone) or as a business group. Private firms can be organized either way, while...

We find evidence consistent with Italian non-listed subsidiaries engaging in accrual and real earnings management, so that their listed parents can meet or beat benchmarks. Thus, the parent firm drives the earnings management of the subsidiaries.We identify parents that are more likely to have...