Prior research finds that the decline in the information content of earnings after restatement announcements is short-lived and the earnings response coefficient (ERC) bounces back after three quarters. We re-examine this issue using a more recent and comprehensive sample of restatements. We find that material restatement firms experience a significant decrease in the ERC over a prolonged period—close to three years after restatement announcements. In contrast, other restatement firms experience a decline in the ERC for only one quarter. We further find that among material restatement firms, those that are subject to more credibility concerns and those that do not take prompt actions to improve reporting credibility experience a longer drop in the ERC. Last, reconciling with prior research, we find that using a more powerful proxy for material restatements and imposing less restrictive sampling requirements help to increase the power of the tests to detect the long-run drop in the ERC. Data Availability: The data are available from the sources indicated in the text.

How to address managerial short-termism is an important issue for companies, regulators, and researchers. We examine the effect of CEO contractual protection, in the form of employment agreements and severance pay agreements, on managerial short-termism. We find that firms with CEO contractual protection are less likely to cut R&D expenditures to avoid earnings decreases and are less likely to engage in real earnings management. The effect of CEO contractual protection is both statistically and economically significant. We further find that this effect increases with the duration and monetary strength of CEO contractual protection. The cross-sectional analyses indicate that the effect is stronger for firms in more homogeneous industries and for firms with higher transient institutional ownership, as protection is particularly important for CEOs in these firms, and is stronger when there are weaker alternative monitoring mechanisms.