Abtract We provide evidence that the use of discretionary accruals to manipulate reported earnings is more pronounced at firms where the CEO's potential total compensation is more closely tied to the value of stock and option holdings. In addition, during years of high accruals, CEOs exercise unusually large numbers of options and CEOs and other insiders sell large quantities of shares.

This paper explores the relationship between the after-tax returns that taxable investors earn on equity mutual funds and the subsequent cash inflows to these funds. Previous studies have documented that funds with high pretax returns attract greater inflows. This paper presents evidence, based on a large sample of retail equity mutual funds over the period 1993–1999, that after-tax returns have more explanatory power than pretax returns in explaining inflows. In addition, funds with large overhangs of unrealized capital gains experience smaller inflows, all else equal, than funds without such unrealized gains. A large capital gain overhang discourages both gross fund inflows and gross outflows, but the inflow effect dominates the outflow effect.