Knowledge that Transforms

ABSTRACT Targets are an integral component of management control systems and play a significant role in achieving desirable performance outcomes. We focus on a key environmental performance objective—reduction of carbon emissions—as a setting in which to examine how target difficulty affects the degree of target completion in long-term non-financial performance. We use a novel dataset compiled by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) and find that firms setting more difficult targets complete a higher percentage of such targets. We also find that this effect is negatively moderated by the provision of monetary incentives. We corroborate this evidence by showing that target difficulty is more effective for carbon reduction projects requiring more novel knowledge and in high-pollution industries. We discuss limitations and suggest avenues for future research.

ABSTRACT Although macroeconomic news has a major impact on corporate earnings, anecdotal evidence suggests that financial analyst research is inefficient with respect to such news. Examining analysts' earnings research, we find that they underreact to negative macroeconomic news. Analysts are not all equal, though, as analysts employed at the same firm as an active macroeconomist underreact much less. We find that the benefit of analyst access to an economist is concentrated in firms that are high in cyclicality relative to their industry, high in cyclicality in general, and that are smaller in size. In addition, analysts who are exposed to more accurate or award-winning in-house macroeconomists benefit more. Investors appear to recognize the advantage of access to macroeconomists, reacting more strongly to these analysts' forecast revisions. Overall, our results suggest that the presence of an active in-house macroeconomist improves the efficiency and credibility of analyst research. JEL Classifications: G12; G14; G24

ABSTRACT I examine whether a reversal of an abnormal cut in discretionary investments is associated with the degree to which the cut is reflective of real earnings management (REM) and whether and how it predicts future operating performance. I define a reversal as occurring when a firm cuts discretionary investments to a below-expected level in one period and reverts back to at least the expected level of investment during the next period. Unlike accrual earnings management, REM involves deliberately altering the operations of the firm to influence reported accounting numbers. To the extent that such interventions diverge from optimality, they can expose the firm to real economic costs. I find that a reversal of an abnormal cut in discretionary investments in the year after the cut has taken place is indicative of REM. I further find that, on average, reversing cuts are associated with lower future operating performance, but that such results vary significantly depending on the various incentives to engage in REM, as well as other factors that affect its associated costs and benefits. These findings are of interest to investors, regulators, and academics with respect to the identification and consequences of REM.

ABSTRACT Although the differential persistence of accruals and operating cash flows is a firm-specific phenomenon, research seeking to exploit the differential persistence of these earnings components typically employs cross-sectional forecasting models. We find that a model based on firm-specific estimates of the differential persistence of accruals and operating cash flows is incrementally useful for out-of-sample forecasting relative to state-of-the-art cross-sectional models. In doing so, we show that firm-specific estimates of differential persistence are particularly useful when forecasting earnings for more stable firms (e.g., more profitable, lower growth, and less levered firms). We also demonstrate that a trading strategy exploiting investors' fixation on earnings and based on firm-specific estimates of differential persistence earns statistically and economically significant excess returns that are incremental to those generated by trading strategies based on the size of accruals. These results suggest that firm-specific estimates of differential persistence are incrementally informative for forecasting and valuation. JEL Classifications: M41.

ABSTRACT Consistent with investors having limited attention, we posit that when faced with competing earnings announcements, investors behave as if they queue the announcements based on a firm or earnings announcement attribute. We focus on two potential queuing attributes: (1) firm visibility, and (2) the expected cost of processing the earnings announcements. We find no support for queuing based on the latter, but find a statistically significant and economically meaningful queuing effect based on firm visibility. Earnings announcements made by firms that are more visible than a given firm—but not by firms that are less visible—mitigate the announcement window market response to that firm's unexpected earnings, with a corresponding magnification in its post-earnings announcement drift. Further, the effects of visibility-based queuing are more pronounced for days with greater clustering of earnings announcements. Additional analysis suggests that individual investors—not institutional investors—drive the queuing effect.

ABSTRACT We study optimal disclosure via two competing communication channels: hard information whose value has been verified, and soft disclosures such as forecasts, unaudited statements, and press releases. We show that certain soft disclosures may contain as much information as hard disclosures, and we establish that: (1) exclusive reliance on soft disclosures tends to convey bad news, (2) credibility is greater when unfavorable information is reported, and (3) misreporting is more likely when soft information is issued jointly with hard information. We also show that a soft report that is seemingly unbiased in expectation need not indicate truthful reporting. We demonstrate that mandatory disclosure of hard information reduces the transmission of soft information, and that the aggregation of hard with soft information will turn all information soft. JEL Classifications: D72; D82; D83; G20.

ABSTRACT We examine how language barriers affect the capital market reaction to information disclosures. Using transcripts from non-U.S. firms' English-language conference calls, we find that the calls of firms in countries with greater language barriers are more likely to contain non-plain English and erroneous expressions. For non-U.S. firms that hire an English-speaking manager, we find less use of non-plain English and fewer erroneous expressions. Calls with a greater use of non-plain English and more erroneous expressions show lower intraday price movement and trading volume. The capital market responses to non-plain English and erroneous expressions are more negative when the firm is located in a non-English-speaking country and has more English-speaking analysts participating in the call. Our results highlight that, when disclosure happens verbally, language barriers between speakers and listeners affect its transparency, which, in turn, impacts the market's reaction.

ABSTRACT Employee contracts often allow for managerial discretion, such that the manager decides after observing an employee's performance how that employee will be rewarded or penalized. Importantly, the effects of such evaluation outcomes can extend beyond the employee(s) directly affected, because such outcomes can be observed by other employees within the firm. The net effect of such vicarious learning as an indirect control depends on the inferences employees make after observing a peer's evaluation outcome. In this study, we use an experiment to investigate whether the inferences observer-employees make about how managers evaluate and reward employee behavior depend on whether the valence of the observed outcome is positive or negative. Using the setting of a strategic performance measurement system, we test and find support for a causal model, in which the valence of the observed outcome influences observer-employees' inferences and subsequent behavioral focus via their psychological distance from, and their construal of, the observed outcome. Our results suggest that how observer-employees respond after observing a peer employee's evaluation outcome is asymmetric. Specifically, when contemplating their own behavior, employees who observe positive outcomes focus on the performance measures within the strategic performance measurement system, whereas those who observe negative outcomes focus on the underlying strategic construct.

ABSTRACT We document that insider trading is significantly higher than normal levels prior to the public disclosure of SEC comment letters relating to revenue recognition. Furthermore, insider trading is triple its normal level for firms with high short positions. We find a small negative return at the comment letter release date and a negative drift in returns of 1 to 5 percent over the next 50 days following the release. We also find that greater pre-disclosure sales are associated with a stronger negative drift. This evidence suggests that insiders appear to benefit from trading prior to revenue recognition comment letters. We investigate whether the delayed price reaction to comment letter releases is due to investor inattention. Consistent with this explanation, we document that comment letters are downloaded infrequently from EDGAR in the days following their public disclosure. JEL Classifications: M41; M48; K42

ABSTRACT Beatty, Liao, and Wu (2013) document that financial misreporting by prominent firms distorts peer firms' capital investment decisions. Using a large sample of firms subject to SEC and DOJ enforcement actions for accounting misstatements, I establish three important generalizations. First, the adverse effect of financial misstatements documented by Beatty et al. (2013) is not limited to high-profile scandals and can be generalized to a larger population. Second, the distortions are not confined to capital investments; they also extend to choices peer firms make with respect to R&D, advertising, and pricing policies—decisions with immediate bottom-line impact. Third, I document that the magnitude of the distortion varies predictably with peer firms' characteristics, the misstating firms' external information environment, and the industry-specific information environment within which the misstatement occurs. Specifically, I find smaller distortions for larger peers and peers managed by more able managers, and larger distortions for more widely followed misstating firms and in the industries in which more firms misstate. Collectively, my results suggest that the distortive effect of financial misstatements is larger and more pervasive than documented in prior research.