Since the 1939 Revenue Act requires a firm using LIFO for taxes to use LIFO for financial reporting, a firm wishing to minimize its tax payments by the use of LIFO must use LIFO as a reporting method. The tax savings to the firm adopting LIFO equals the difference between FIFO cost of goods sold...

This paper analyzes the relationship between a firm's demand for different quality auditors and opportunities for earnings management.In our model, the firm simultaneously chooses the bias it introduces into its pre-audited earnings and the quality of its auditor. We show that firms that choose...

A corollary to Murphy's Law is: The other lane always moves faster than my lane. We show that even when the law is objectively untrue, because of sampling bias, people perceive the law as true. A manager who is aware of this perceptual bias will try to structure her budget cutbacks and all other...