Statement of Financial Accounting Standards 123R suggests that lattice valuation models may improve the estimates of reported employee stock option values relative to the more commonly used Black–Scholes (BS) model. However, lattice model critics have expressed concerns that managers may use lattice models' flexibility to opportunistically understate option values. In this study, we investigate a sample of firms that recently adopted a lattice model to value employee stock options to provide evidence on this issue by identifying the determinants of lattice model adoption and examining the effect of lattice model use on reported option values. We report three main results. First, we find that firms are more likely to adopt a lattice model when it is more likely to produce lower values than the BS model and when managers have incentives to lower stock option expense. Second, we find that firms adopting a lattice model increase understatement of reported option values more than firms that continue to use the BS model and that the incremental understatement is due to use of the lattice model. Third, we conduct several tests to examine whether the valuation effect of lattice model use is consistent with efforts to correct for documented shortcomings in the BS model and find no evidence that this is the case. Taken together, the evidence in this study suggests that firms adopt and implement lattice models primarily to lower reported option values.

Exclusions from street earnings can include both expected exclusions, forecasted ex ante by analysts, and unexpected exclusions, revealed after earnings are reported. While prior research largely examines total exclusions from street earnings, unexpected exclusions reflect the news or surprise in exclusions. We investigate the properties and informativeness of unexpected exclusions for future profitability, benchmark beating, analyst forecast errors, and future stock returns. We find that unexpected exclusions represent a mix of transitory and recurring items and are informative about future street earnings. In an analysis of hand‐collected analysts' reports, we find that unexpected exclusions are more likely to reflect misestimated recurring items when analysts forecasted exclusions, and unexpected transitory items when analysts did not forecast exclusions. We also examine benchmark‐beating behavior, in which street earnings meet street forecasts but GAAP earnings miss GAAP forecasts. We observe that benchmark beating is more likely to occur when analysts forecast exclusions than when they do not. Moreover, we find unexpected exclusions are more persistent when street earnings meet street forecasts but GAAP earnings miss GAAP forecasts. These findings are consistent with recurring earnings amounts being opportunistically shifted to excluded items to meet analysts' street forecasts. Finally, we find some evidence that analysts and investors react to, but do not fully incorporate, the information in unexpected exclusions, based on forecast revisions and stock price reactions.

Theory from organizations and economics research posits that in an inter‐organizational relationship, both parties invest in relationship‐specific knowledge, which in turn facilitates the effectiveness of the relationship while strengthening the attachment between the parties. In complex settings where there are more opportunities for knowledge creation, the investments will be larger and the attachment stronger. Because banks are complex institutions that present unique challenges to auditors, we suggest that effective audits critically depend on the accumulation of significant investments in client‐specific expertise through a long association with the client. We find a positive association between audit firm tenure and financial reporting quality, and this association is particularly strong in banks that are more complex. Also, contrary to recent research we find that benefits of audit firm tenure for complex banks accrue even for long tenure and are not limited to medium tenure. Our findings largely support the notion that a long relationship with the client reflects the underlying demand for expertise, which is critical for high‐quality audits of complex organizations. Imposing short‐term limits on audit firms would adversely affect the investments in client‐specific expertise especially in the cases where this expertise is needed the most. Our findings do not support calls for mandatory audit firm rotation for large complex institutions.

In this study we examine whether the reported performance of one firm affects the discretionary reporting behavior of another firm. We do this by identifying the leader within each industry, defined as the first large announcing firm. We find that the discretionary performance of followers (those firms announcing after the leader) relates positively to the leader's reported performance. Specifically, when the leader misses analysts’ expectations, followers report lower discretionary accruals, have fewer income‐decreasing special items, and are less likely to meet analysts’ expectations. In contrast, when leaders report good news, followers report higher discretionary accruals and are more likely to meet expectations (although we do not find evidence of a positive association between leaders’ good news and followers’ income‐decreasing special items). Overall, the results are consistent with managers of followers perceiving that earnings news of the leader will affect investors’ and others’ performance expectations for their firms.