We examine the information role of accounting disclosures on warranties, utilizing a database that became available due to the requirements of FIN 45. First, because firms use warranty policies as a business strategy to promote their products, a warranty reserve can serve two roles: an...

Earnings management is a corporate decision subject to costs. Both earnings management in the IPO process and the ex ante delisting risk of newly issued firms are related to firm fundamentals. With a sample of IPOs from 1980 to 1999, we find that the degree of earnings management possesses...

The association of a country's investor protection regime with the quality of reported earnings is examined for a large sample of firms from 42 countries. Three attributes of earnings are evaluated: the magnitude of the association of a country's investor protection regime with the quality of...

Conservatism is one of the attributes of accounting quality. Conservatism is also one of the major reasons for international differences in financial reporting. The objective of this paper is to examine earnings quality proxied by earnings conservatism in transitional economies of Central and...

Our analysis is rooted in the notion that stockholders can learn about the fundamental value of any firm from observing the earnings reports of its rivals. We argue that such intraindustry information transfers, which have been broadly documented in the empirical literature, may motivate...

We explore how the readability of annual reports varies with earnings management. Using the Fog Index to measure readability (Li 2008), and focusing on the management discussion and analysis section of the annual report (MD&A), we predict and find that firms most likely to have managed earnings...

We investigate whether income smoothing affects the usefulness of earnings for contracting through the monitoring role of earnings-based debt covenants. First, we examine initial contract design and predict that income smoothing will increase (decrease) the use of earnings-based covenants if...

Prior studies that examine the effect of managerial incentives on investment or misreporting decisions typically hold firm characteristics constant and focus on a particular managerial incentive. However, managers' responses to different types of incentives likely depend on firm characteristics...

This paper investigates whether managers' presentation of special items within the financial statements reflects economic performance or opportunism. Specifically, we assess special items presented as a separate line item on the income statement (income statement presentation) to those...

In this paper we investigate whether auditors' decisions can be explained by accruals quality. Using alternative measures of accruals quality developed by prior researchers, we find that a firm with poorer accruals quality is associated with higher audit fees, a greater likelihood of receiving a...