We study the impact of firms’ abnormal business operations on their future crash risk in stock prices. Computed based on real earnings management (REM) models, firms' deviation in real operations from industry norms (DRO) is shown to be positively associated with their future crash risk. This association is incremental to that between discretionary accruals (DA) and crash risk found by prior st...

Despite the large number of papers purporting to identify earnings management, the current techniques used to identify it are sorely lacking. In general, they are based on the assumption that accruals unexplained by a linear projection on firm-level observables (i.e., discretionary accruals) represent either explicit earnings management or poor quality earnings.1 Namely, these techniques assume...

When the Revelation Principle (RP) holds, managing earnings confers no advantage over revelation. We construct an explanation for earnings management that is based on limitations on owners’ ability to make commitments (a violation of the RP’s assumptions). Traditionally, earnings management is seen as sneaky managers pulling the wool over the eyes of gullible owners by manipulating accruals; ou...

This paper examines the relation between smooth past earnings performance and the credibility of voluntary management earnings forecasts. Specifically, using strings of increasing earnings per share as our measure of past performance, we demonstrate that both analyst forecast revisions and stock price reactions around management earnings forecasts are more pronounced when the firm has posted a ...

This paper uses a principal-agent model to study the interaction between hedging and earnings management. Hedging makes earnings management more difficult and they appear to be strategic substitutes in this model, which is both consistent with existing empirical evidence and provides a new explanation for that evidence. If hedging decision is contractible, hedging is efficient since it reduces ...

In the context of IT infrastructure development, this paper empirically examines the relationship between IT investments and corporate earnings management. Our results suggest that earnings management undermines the firm’s capability of accomplishing its planned IT investments in infrastructure development. Strategic managers are also likely to manipulate IT infrastructure investments to achiev...

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