We conduct an experiment to investigate the differential effect of recognizing versus disclosing reasonable and supportable forecasts of future loss conditions on investors' valuation assessments when economic fundamentals either deteriorate or improve. Our main finding is that when entities enjoy growth at constant risk, the accelerated recognition of future loss conditions can induce valuation assessments that are opposed to the entity's enhanced valuation. Supplementary analyses reveal that investors misattribute (some) expected losses to the entity's past performance and rely on unadjusted current summary earnings to assess the entity's prospects. Our findings provide insight into the cognitive processes that lead investors to incorrectly assess earnings trends and inform regulators, standard setters, investors, and preparers that the accelerated recognition of relevant and unbiased forward-looking loss estimates can impair the decision-usefulness of financial statements.

We examine the impact of identity preferences on the interrelation between incentives and performance measurement. In our model, a manager identifies with an organization and loses utility to the extent that his actions conflict with effort-standards issued by the principal. Contrary to prior arguments in the literature, we find conditions under which a manager who identifies strongly with the organization receives stronger incentives and faces more performance evaluation reports than a manager who does not identify with the organization. Our theory predicts that managers who experience events that boost their identification with the firm can decrease their effort in short-term value creation. We also find that firms are more likely to employ less precise but more congruent performance measures, such as stock prices, when contracting with managers who identify little with the organization. In contrast, they use more precise but less congruent measures, such as accounting earnings, when contracting with managers who identify strongly with the firm.