This paper investigates whether managers’ presentation of special items within the financial statements reflects economic performance or opportunism. Specifically, we assess special items presented as a separate line item on the income statement (income statement presentation) to those aggregated within another line item with disclosure only in the footnotes (footnote presentation). Our study is motivated by standard‐setting interest in performance reporting and financial statement presentation, as well as prior research investigating managers’ presentation choices in other contexts. Empirical results reveal that special items receiving income statement presentation are less persistent relative to those receiving footnote presentation. These results are consistent across numerous alternative specifications. Overall, the findings are consistent with managers using the income statement versus footnote presentation to assist users in identifying those special items most likely to differ from other components of earnings — that is, for informational, as opposed to opportunistic, motivations.

This paper investigates whether presentation of special items within the financial statements reflects the firm's underlying economic performance or opportunism. We examine the presentation of recognized special items either as a separate line item on the income statement or aggregated within another line item with disclosure only in the footnotes. Our study is motivated by standard-setting interest in performance reporting and financial statement presentation, as well as prior research investigating managers' presentation choices in other contexts. Using different constructs of persistence to capture the economics of reported special items, we find evidence consistent across a range of specifications that special items highlighted on the income statement are more transitory than those revealed only in the footnotes. For most special items, these results are consistent with this presentation decision reflecting underlying firm performance. For a subset observations -namely, those likely to reflect "big bath" reporting incentives -we provide limited evidence suggestive of opportunism in this presentation decision.

This study examines whether mandatory adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards ( IFRS ) leads to capital market benefits through enhanced financial statement comparability. U.K. domestic standards are considered very similar to IFRS , suggesting any capital market benefits observed for U.K.‐domiciled firms are more likely attributable to improvements in comparability (i.e., better precision of across ‐firm information) than to changes in information quality specific to the firm (i.e., core information quality). If IFRS adoption improves financial statement comparability, we predict this should reduce insiders' ability to benefit from private information. Consistent with these expectations, we find that abnormal returns to insider purchases ― used to proxy for private information ― are reduced following IFRS adoption. Similar results obtain across numerous subsamples and proxies used to isolate IFRS effects attributable to comparability. Together, the findings are consistent with mandatory IFRS adoption improving comparability and thus leading to capital market benefits by reducing insiders' ability to exploit private information.