Consistent with investors having limited attention, we posit that when faced with competing earnings announcements, investors behave as if they queue the announcements based on a firm or earnings announcement attribute. We focus on two potential queuing attributes: (1) firm visibility, and (2) the expected cost of processing the earnings announcements. We find no support for queuing based on the latter, but find a statistically significant and economically meaningful queuing effect based on firm visibility. Earnings announcements made by firms that are more visible than a given firm—but not by firms that are less visible—mitigate the announcement window market response to that firm's unexpected earnings, with a corresponding magnification in its post-earnings announcement drift. Further, the effects of visibility-based queuing are more pronounced for days with greater clustering of earnings announcements. Additional analysis suggests that individual investors—not institutional investors—drive the queuing effect.

Using a large sample of U.S. firms spanning the period 2000–2010, we document a strong positive association between the sensitivity of CEO compensation portfolio to stock return volatility (vega) and audit fees. We also show that the positive association between vega and audit fees is weaker in the post-Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) period. In supplementary tests, we show that the relation between vega and audit fees is stronger for firms with older CEOs and in firms where the CEO is also chairman of the board. Collectively, our results suggest that audit firms incorporate executive risk-taking incentives in the fees they charge for their services.