This paper examines the pervasiveness of earnings management across 31 countries between 1990 and 1999. It documents systematic differences in earnings management across different clusters of countries. We propose an explanation for these differences based on the notion that insiders, in an...

We study the impact of the size of a firm's board of directors on managerial incentives. We present a model where a risk-averse agent (the top management team) performs multiple tasks for a firm that is controlled by multiple principals (the board of directors) who differ in the relative value...

This paper examines the pervasiveness of earnings management across 31 countries between 1990 and 1999. It documents systematic differences in earnings management across different clusters of countries. We propose an explanation for these differences based on the notion that insiders, in an...

We examine the relation between managers' disclosure activities and their stock price-based incentives. Managers are privy to information that investors demand and are reluctant to publicly disseminate it unless provided appropriate incentives. We argue that stock price-based incentives in the...

We examine changes in CEOs' disclosure styles in quarterly earnings conference calls, over their tenure. Our longitudinal analysis of newly hired CEOs shows that CEOs' forward-looking disclosures and their disclosures' relative optimism decline in their tenure. Further, externally hired and...

We provide new evidence on the co-dependence among the many country attributes previously linked to financial reporting quality. First, we show that the synchronicity of 21 changing country attributes spikes surrounding mandatory IFRS adoption. Thus, while IFRS adoption “explains” increased...

We document that credit spreads are positively related to two types of executory contracts: noncancellable operating leases and unconditional purchase obligations. However, while leases and purchase obligations receive the same treatment by the Bankruptcy Code and current financial reporting...

We examine whether similarities in legal, sociological, and cultural characteristics between countries (country-pair homophily) affect foreign director appointments. Our results from estimating a gravity model, which includes economic and geographic country characteristics, indicate that...

The international financial reporting literature identifies a multitude of country attributes that each appear to explain financial reporting differences around the world. We first show that a single underlying factor explains across-country variation in 6 reporting quality measures used in the...

We empirically examine two competing claims: first, if a firm's Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activity is driven by its CEO's private rent extraction (i.e. an agency problem), firms with higher CSR ratings are poorly governed and their managers are less likely to be dismissed for poor...