Campbell, Lettau, Malkiel, and Xu (2001) document a positive trend in idiosyncratic volatility during the 1962-1997 period. We show that by 2003 volatility falls back to pre-1990s levels. Furthermore, we show that the increase and subsequent reversal is concentrated among firms with low stock...

This paper comprehensively reviews Accounting for Income Taxes (AFIT). The first half provides background and a primer on AFIT. The second half reviews existing studies in detail and offers suggestions for future research. We emphasize the research questions that have been addressed (most of...

This paper quantifies the “human costs of bankruptcy” by estimating employee wage losses induced by the bankruptcy filing of employers using employee-employer matched data from the U.S. Census Bureau's LEHD program. We find that employee wages begin to deteriorate one year prior to...

The final working paper version: 'http://ssrn.com/abstract=2103384' http://ssrn.com/abstract=2103384.Presentation slides: "http://ssrn.com/abstract=2347428" http://ssrn.com/abstract=2347428.We provide insights into earnings quality from a survey of 169 CFOs of public companies and in-depth...

Do firms issue stock when prices seem irrationally high? Do they invest or save the proceeds from the sale of overvalued stocks? Is value created or destroyed in the process? This paper uses a novel identification strategy to tackle these questions. We examine the capital investment, stock...

The comprehensive survey reported here allowed analysis of how senior U.S. financial executives make decisions related to performance measurement and voluntary disclosure. Chief financial officers were asked what earnings benchmarks they cared about and which factors motivated executives to...

We find that employee stock option deductions lead to large aggregate tax savings for Nasdaq 100 and Samp;P 100 firms and also affect corporate marginal tax rates. For Nasdaq firms, including the effect of options reduces the estimated median marginal tax rate from 31% to 5%. For Samp;P firms,...

We find that employee stock option deductions lead to large aggregate tax savings for Nasdaq 100 and Samp;P 100 firms and also affect corporate marginal tax rates. For Nasdaq firms, the median marginal tax rate is 31 percent when option deductions are ignored but falls to 5 percent when one...

We examine whether the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 increased the information provided in accounting disclosures. Prior research examining the effects of the Act generally relies on long- window tests and yields mixed results. We improve upon prior designs by examining return, return...

In February and March of 1999, we surveyed 392 CFOs about the cost of capital, capital budgeting, and capital structure. The survey consisted of 14 main questions, most with subparts - over 100 questions in total. Although the survey was anonymous, we also collected information on 12...