Revenues and expenses are fundamentally proportional to one another, but are likely to be disproportionally affected by transitory items or economic shocks. We build on this observation and propose a new measure of sustainable earnings based on deviations from normal profit margins. While some...

Though ample empirical evidence alludes to the importance of disaggregated accounting data in the context of earnings management, extant accounting theory considers biases in reporting earnings mostly at the aggregated level of the reported earnings. By analyzing reporting manipulations at the...

This study examines investor reaction to return on common equity (ROCE) and its components around the announcement of quarterly earnings. It is an issue that the accounting literature has not examined, notwithstanding the importance of ratio analysis in general and the DuPont decomposition in...

It is widely agreed that corporate financial reports provide deficient information about intangible assets. However, investors are exposed to substantial information beyond financial reports, such as managers' direct communications to capital markets and analysts' reports. We ask: To what extent...

The study examines the value-relevance of reported financial information of fast-changing science-based companies and the incremental value-relevance of publicly available nonfinancial information. Based on a sample of independent cellular phone companies we find that on a stand-alone basis...

Most agree that value-relevance and timeliness are two important and desirable attributes of financial information. In this study, we examine the value-relevance and timeliness of financial information under different information regimes: distinct trading mechanisms and different levels of...

We use pension asset allocation data to examine the relation between the expected long-term rate of return (ERR) on pension assets and the amount of funds allocated by fund managers to equity securities. If firms use their best estimate of the ERR, then cross-sectional differences in the ERR...

This study explains the cross-sectional variation in firms' selected assumptions (discount rates and health care cost trend rates) used to measure the obligation for post-retirement benefits other than pensions (PRB) under SFAS No. 106. Our aim is to examine whether managements manger the...

This study uses SFAS No. 106 disclosures to investigate the abilities of post-retirement benefit (PRB) liability components, and annual PRB cost components to explain cross-sectional variation in market-to-book ratios. SFAS No. 106 requires disclosure of the sensitivity of the PRB liability and...

We identify and test motives for corporate pension asset allocations using a proprietary asset allocation database covering the 1988-1994 period. We focus on the question of whether the recognition of additional minimum pension liability in accordance with SFAS No. 87 affects asset allocation....