Do potential migrants have accurate information about the risks and returns of migrating abroad? And, given the information they have, what is their revealed willingness to trade risks for higher earnings? To answer these questions, this paper sets up and analyzes a randomized field experiment among 3,319 potential work migrants from Nepal to Malaysia and the Persian Gulf countries. The experim...

Using a data set of Taiwanese female graduates in 2006, this study finds that height and earnings are positively correlated for full-time workers. However, it is not because tall individuals went to better colleges or received better grades (cognitive ability), not because they are gifted with superior physical strength or because they have participated in more extracurricular activities (non-c...

A finitely lived worker confronts a labor supply indivisibility, chooses when to work, and smooths consumption by trading a risk-free bond. A schedule maps cumulative time worked into current earnings. With a specification of preferences that assures balanced growth, the more elastic are earnings to accumulated working time, the longer is a worker’s career. Negative (positive) unanticipated ear...

The systematic risk of US commercial bank stocks more than doubled from 2000 to 2006, primarily due to their increased residential mortgage exposure. Higher levels of mortgage lending produced better earnings but relatively lower stock returns. Banks engaged heavily in mortgage lending encountered less enthusiastic market response to their earnings announcements, suggesting that financial marke...

A fundamental role of accounting information in financial markets is to serve as a basis for capital allocation. An important attribute of the quality of accounting information is the extent to which earnings (accruals) map into cash flows. A poor mapping of accruals into cash flows reduces the information content of reported earnings and results in lower-quality earnings. If investors differ i...

We examine firm valuation with optimal liquidity (retained earnings) and dividend choice under revenue uncertainty that incorporates debt financing and bankruptcy costs. We revisit the conditions for dividend policy irrelevancy and the role of retained earnings and dividends. Retained earnings have a net positive impact on firm value in the presence of growth options, high external financing co...

Security analysts generally provide forecasts of earnings for the current period as well as oneyear ahead earnings at fiscal year end. In this study, we derive an estimation procedure, which infers forecast bias from equivalent price expressions that utilize different horizon earnings forecasts. It is well documented that analyst long-horizon earnings forecasts tend to be more optimistic (ex po...

This article introduces the 2006 Earnings Public-Use File (EPUF) and provides important background information on the file's data fields. The EPUF contains selected demographic and earnings information for 4.3 million individuals drawn from a 1-percent sample of all Social Security numbers issued before January 2007. The data file provides aggregate earnings for 1937 to 1950 and annual earnings...

This paper investigates the effects of heterogeneous beliefs about future firm earnings and agency conflicts on corporate capital structure. We develop a dynamic structural model in which the manager of a firm has discretion in financing and effort and receives dynamic incentives through an explicit contract with shareholders in the presence of heterogeneous beliefs between the two parties. The...

Academic interest in the ethical quality of accountants’ judgments has produced a steady stream of research addressing the role of education in fostering ethical behavior. Although various studies have evaluated the cognitive moral development of accounting students, few studies have considered the influence of accounting contextual factors on ethical judgments. This study evaluates the influen...