This article is about ethics, or more correctly questionable ethics. It is also about greed. When a commercial party’s consideration for its stakeholders is distorted by an opportunity for short-term gain, it creates a self-centric view of the world. This myopia creates a blurred vision of...

We investigate, using data on US manufacturing firms, how and when corporate governance affects managers’ decisions to use discretionary accruals and thereby artificially influence company financial reports. We employ 3SLS to study the relationship between financial status, corporate...

Four concepts of cash flow are discussed and compared: simple cash flow, operating activities cash flow, net operating profit after taxes, and free cash flow. The differences between these concepts are shown to be very large. Issues connected to terminal value are presented. Finally, the idea of...

By analyzing actual cash flows in comparison with enterprise values (market capitalization plus debt minus cash) we document that the market dramatically undervalues firms. The findings suggest that the equity market appears to have an extraordinarily high discount rate which negates future...

Neoclassical economic theory describes employee compensation as being equal to the worker's marginal revenue product. Other explanations of the wage formation process exist. For example, concept formation may enable employees to manipulate organizations and thereby receive higher compensation...

A substantial share of domestic energy supplies is produced by the oil and gas production industry. The oil field services industry provides valuable assistance to these exploration and production companies. The failure rates in both industries have increased recently. Failure rates in the two...