Using a sample of 2,085 voluntarily-provided “unbundled” management earnings forecasts in 1,372 unique press releases during the 1997-2006 period, we find significant incremental pricing effects for linguistic sentiment included in management forecast press releases. Our setting is distinct from those examined in prior linguistic studies in that forecasts are voluntarily issued, incentive-drive...

C orporate governance structures in the wake of observed differences in firm ownership structures in developed markets and emerging market economies are distinct. In this paper, we examine the effect of an ownership structure of firms on the market reaction to corporate news flows in the context of emerging market economies like India. We observe the price and volume movements associ...

We document that firms’ management of accounting earnings increased steadily from 1987 until the passage of the Sarbanes Oxley Act (SOX), with a significant increase during the period prior to SOX, followed by a significant decline after passage of SOX. However, the increase in earnings management preceding SOX was primarily in poorly performing industries. We also show that the informativeness...

The purpose of this article is to examine whether the legal obligation for Belgian listed companies to release annually their earnings is still useful in markets where the quantity of information already present is important. A sample of 108 earnings releases between January 1997 and June 1999 by Belgian companies listed on the First Market of the Brussels Stock Exchange has been analysed. The ...

Predictability and variability are two measures commonly used in the empirical literature to gauge the quality of earnings and hence, decision usefulness to investors. We adopt both measures to investigate empirically the relative quality of Stern Stewart’s measure of economic value added (EVA) compared to GAAP earnings, residual income, cash flows and other mandated metrics in the US and UK. W...

We examine how adjustments to earnings during year-end audits affect measures of earnings quality. There are four key findings. First, audit adjustments cause earnings to become smoother and more persistent. Second, the adjustments result in higher accrual quality. Third, audit adjustments have a larger negative effect on signed accruals than absolute accruals. Fourth, the adjustments do not re...

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...

I present evidence of inefficient information processing in equity markets by documenting that negative information withheld by securities analysts is incorporated in stock prices with a significant delay. I estimate the extent of the withheld negative information based on the proportion of analysts who stop revising their annual earnings forecasts. This measure predicts negative earnings surpr...

This paper examines the differences in accrual-based and real earnings management across countries from the perspective of investor protection. Following prior research (Leuz et al., 2003), we hypothesize that accrual-based earnings management is more constrained by strict discipline in countries with stronger investor protection. For real earnings management in countries with stronger investor...