Regulators have alleged that digital giants (Alphabet, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon) have misused their market power to earn abnormal profits. Research that systematically documents whether technology firms earn abnormal profits is limited, arguably because (i) U.S. GAAP based...

Based on the current U.S. GAAP, internally developed intangibles are not included in reported assets. Omission of an increasingly important class of assets reduces the usefulness and relevance of financial statement analysis, conducted using book value. Recent studies attempt to overcome this...

Firms can increase their level of conservatism by recognizing adverse economic events more promptly or by delaying the recognition of positive economic events, that is, by increasing their loss or gains conservatism, respectively. We extend prior research by examining the independent...

We find that the average credit and liquidity risks of U.S. banks, the two principal determinants of bank distress, increased significantly over the last forty years or so. This trend stemmed from progressively aggressive business strategies adopted by new banking cohorts as well as old...

Prior studies show that the risk level of each new cohort of listed firms is higher than its predecessor's. We find that these risk differences are persistent and investigate two potential explanations: (1) Each cohort adopts and retains operating innovations that are associated with higher...

Life is short. That's never been more true for corporations today. An analysis of all 29,688 firms that listed from 1960 through 2009, divided into 10-year cohorts, reveals that newly listed firms in recent cohorts fail more frequently than did those in older ones. Creative destruction is...

Ideally, firms should discontinue projects that become unprofitable. Managers, however, continue to operate such projects because of their limited employment horizons and empire-building motivations (Jensen, 1986; Ball, 2001). Prior studies suggest that timely loss recognition in accounting earnings...

The literature shows that a lender becomes reluctant to aid a distressed client after it receives insurance on its outstanding debt via a credit default swap (CDS). The onset of CDS trade thus accelerates client bankruptcy. We predict that the client firm's shareholders would respond by...