Using financial accounting data from manufacturing firms in 16 countries for 1986-1995, we demonstrate that the value relevance of financial reports is lower for countries where the financial systems are bank-oriented rather than market-oriented; where private sector bodies are not involved in...

We examine changes in firms' discretionary accounting accruals around the commencement of activism by hedge funds. We argue that hedge funds have the potential to provide increased monitoring of earnings management behavior and we predict and find empirically that average discretionary accruals...

This paper examines the effect of tax planning and earnings management on the informativeness of book income and taxable income. We conduct two sets of tests documenting (1) the incremental effect of tax planning and earnings management on the informativeness of book and taxable income and (2)...