Reviewers use expectations about the client and preparer to help form perceptions of the probability of preparer error and relative accountability to the client and financial statement users (Gibbins and Trotman 2002; Rich et al. 1997b). Experimental findings suggest these perceptions interact to affect reviewers' agreement with the preparers' work and decisions about the amount of preparer follow-up work required. Further, the nature of reviewer cognition, as measured by the relative proportion of critical and supportive reviewer elaboration explains a significant portion of the effect of these perceptions on reviewer judgment and decisions. Elaboration is a stage of reviewers' judgment and decision-making processes in which the reviewer assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the preparer's work (Petty and Cacioppo 1986; Rich et al. 1997b; Lerner and Tetlock 1999). Although the extent of reviewer elaboration is also affected by expectations about the client and the preparer, extent of elaboration does not explain a significant portion of the effect on reviewer judgment. These findings increase our understanding of how and why expectations of the client and preparer interact to affect reviewer judgments and decisions.

I selectively survey the use of expectations in accounting research. While expectations are central to modeling work and essential in empirical documentation, we tend to rely on largely exogenous expectations, as opposed to closing the analysis with aggressive identification of information sources and an explicit equilibrium argument.

We examine the value relevance and reliability of brand assets recognized by 33 U.K. firms, and the stock price reaction to the announcement of brand capitalization. We find that brand assets are value relevant, i.e., associated with market values. However, the market capitalization rates of brands of firms with low contracting incentives are higher than those of firms with high contracting incentives to capitalize and overstate brand values. Thus, there could be substantial differences in the extent of bias or error in brand valuations of firms with different levels of contracting incentives, i.e., brand asset measures might not be reliable. The stock price reaction during the 21 days surrounding the first announcement of brand recognition is significantly positively associated with the recognized brand amount. However, the brand coefficient is only a small fraction of what would be expected if markets did not impute any value to brands before firms recognized them. Few previous value-relevance studies have examined intangible assets recognized in financial statements, and none have examined the effects of contracting incentives on the reliability of the reported values of intangible assets.

This paper presents an experiment that examines the effect of pro forma earnings disclosures on the judgments of analysts (i.e., more sophisticated investors) and nonprofessional (i.e., less sophisticated) investors. In the experiment, participants developed stock price assessments after reviewing background financial information and a current earnings announcement for a company. The earnings announcement was manipulated to report only GAAP earnings in one condition and both pro forma and GAAP earnings in the other condition. Consistent with empirical evidence, the pro forma earnings in our experiment exceeded GAAP earnings. The results indicate that nonprofessional investors who received an earnings announcement that contained both pro forma and GAAP disclosures assessed a higher stock price than did nonprofessionals who received an announcement containing only GAAP disclosures. Financial analysts' stock price judgments were not affected by the pro forma disclosures. Followup analyses suggest that analysts and nonprofessional investors used different valuation models and information processing. Analysts used well-defined valuation models, based on either earnings-multiples or cash flows, while the nonprofessional investors were more likely to use simpler, heuristic-based valuation models. The pro forma disclosure did not cause nonprofessional investors to assess a higher earnings number for determining a stock price, but rather caused nonprofessionals to perceive the earnings announcement as more favorable, which in turn caused them to convert earnings or some other performance metric into a higher stock price. This effect appears to be due to unintentional cognitive effects, rather than nonprofessionals relying on pro forma earnings information because they perceived it to be informative.

This paper investigates the effect of regulation that mandates open access to information on managers' disclosure choices and investors' reactions to disclosures. The recently passed Regulation FD (Reg FD) requires firms to make material disclosures broadly available. Using a sample of firms that previously restricted access to conference calls and a sample of firms that voluntarily allowed unlimited access to their calls in the pre-Reg FD period, we examine the effect of the new rule on managers' decisions regarding the timing, use, and information content of calls, as well as the effect on investors' trading behavior during the call. Our results indicate that Reg FD had a significant negative impact on managers' decisions to continue hosting conference calls and on their decisions regarding the optimal time to hold the call. However, contrary to the concerns of many critics, the magnitudes of these changes are not large. We do not find evidence that Reg FD decreased the amount of information disclosed during the call period, contrary to the concerns of Reg FD opponents. Finally, we find evidence that the new rule increased price volatility for firms that previously restricted access to their calls (relative to firms that previously held open calls) and that the amount of individual investor trading increased following the rule change. Overall, our results suggest that Reg FD impacted trading during the conference call window for firms most affected by the new regulation.