One consequence of the shift to fair value measurement is the emergence of voluntary disclosures in audited financial statements that question the reliability of mandated fair value information. We refer to these disclosures as reliability disavowals. We examine stock option volatility estimates disclosed under SFAS 123 and test whether disavowals are informative (opportunistic) by examining whether ex ante firm characteristics, forecast bias, and prediction difficulty are consistent with informative (opportunistic) disclosure. Our results support the hypothesis that disavowals inform users about the reliability of volatility estimates, but there is also limited evidence consistent with managers using disavowals opportunistically.

This study examines the effect of ongoing deregulation in the electric utility industry on the relation between market value, book value, and earnings. We predict that deregulation decreases (increases) the relative importance of book value (earnings) in explaining price. We test this prediction by examining changes in the value relevance of book value and earnings during the 1988–1996 time period for a sample of large, investor-owned electric utilities. We find that the regression coefficients and incremental explanatory power related to book value (earnings) have decreased (increased) over this time period. These results are generally robust in sensitivity analysis.

Implementation of Public Company Accounting Oversight Board Auditing Standards No. 2 on internal control and No. 3 on documentation has delayed audit completion. However, due to market demand for timely disclosures, most firms maintain the same preliminary earnings release date even though the audit may not be complete as of that date. Results indicate revisions to preliminary announcements when filing the 10-K report would have been 35% lower during 2005 if the historical frequency of issuing earnings releases after the audit report date had not changed. Additionally, stock market reaction to impending revisions suggests lower reliability of preliminary earnings.