Knowledge that Transforms

Despite the common use of negotiations to set budgets in practice, accounting research has focused primarily on budgets set unilaterally by subordinates, while goal-setting research in management has focused primarily on budgets set unilaterally by superiors. In addition, budgeting research in accounting has focused almost exclusively on the planning aspects of budgets to the exclusion of their motivational aspects. This study complements prior research in two ways. First, the study examines how budgets and the economic consequences of the budget-setting process differ when budgets are set through a negotiation process vs. when set unilaterally. The study also considers factors associated with negotiation agreement and the relation between agreement and the economic consequences of negotiated budgets. Second, the economic consequences examined are budgetary slack and subordinate performance, allowing us to address the trade-offs between the planning and motivational aspects of budgets. Negotiated budgets differ from unilaterally set budgets in a manner consistent with social norms and/or information transfer occurring during negotiations. Both the budgets and the economic consequences of the budgetsetting process differ when budgets are set through a negotiation process where superiors have final authority in the event of a negotiation impasse vs. when set unilaterally by superiors. Further, negotiation agreement significantly affects the economic consequences of negotiated budgets. Budgets set through a negotiation process ending in agreement contain significantly less slack. A failed negotiation followed by superiors imposing a budget has a significant detrimental effect on subordinate performance.

The balanced scorecard is a new tool that complements traditional measures of business unit performance. The scorecard contains a diverse set of performance measures, including financial performance, customer relations, internal business processes, and learning and growth. Advocates of the balanced scorecard suggest that each unit in the organization should develop and use its own scorecard, choosing measures that capture the unit's business strategy. Our study examines judgmental effects of the balanced scorecard—specifically, how balanced scorecards that include some measures common to multiple units and other measures that are unique to a particular unit affect superiors' evaluations of that unit's performance. Our test shows that only the common measures affect the superiors' evaluations. We discuss the implications of this result for research and practice.

This paper reports the results of an experiment that examines how incentive-based compensation contracts compare to flat-wage compensation contracts in motivating individual learning and performance. I use a multiperiod cognitive task where the accounting system generates information (feedback) that has both a contracting role and a belief-revision role. The results suggest that incentives enhance performance and the rate of improvement in performance by increasing both: (1) the amount of time participants devoted to the task, and (2) participants' analysis and use of information. Further, I find evidence that incentives improve performance only after considerable feedback and experience, which may help explain why many prior one-shot decision-making experiments show no incentive effects. Collectively, the results suggest that incentives induce individuals to work longer and smarter, thereby increasing the likelihood that they will develop and use the innovative strategies frequently required to perform well in complex judgment tasks and learning situations.

Many developing economies use tax holidays to attract foreign investment by providing a limited period of tax exemptions and reductions for qualified investors. This paper investigates the effect of tax holidays on foreign investors' tax noncompliance behavior in China's developing economy. We measure noncompliance in terms of tax audit adjustments the Chinese tax authorities require in response to avoidance and evasion. The results indicate that a company's tax-holiday position affects noncompliance. Companies are least compliant before entering a tax holiday, and most compliant while in a tax-exemption period. In addition, domestic market-oriented companies, service-oriented companies, and joint ventures are less compliant than export-oriented companies, manufacturing-oriented companies, and wholly foreign-owned enterprises, respectively. Our evidence is relevant to policymakers designing tax incentives to attract foreign investors. Our evidence on noncompliance should also help tax authorities and field auditors plan more effective and efficient tax audits. In addition, the results should provide researchers an interesting perspective to study the effect of tax-rate incentives on corporate tax noncompliance.

This study uses an analytical model to investigate the value of the firm when there are temporary differences between when revenue and expense items are recognized for tax- and financial-reporting purposes. The model shows that deferred tax assets and liabilities transform book values of underlying liabilities and assets into estimates of the after-tax cash flows on which the firm's market value is based. The analysis shows that if tax deductions are taken on a cash basis, and if the underlying assets and liabilities are recorded at the present value of their associated future cash flows, then the value of deferred tax assets and deferred tax liabilities is their recorded amount, regardless of when the asset will be realized or when the liability will reverse. If tax deductions are not taken when the expenditure is made (e.g., depreciation) or if underlying assets and liabilities are recorded at more than the present value of their associated future cash flows (e.g., warranty liabilities), then the market value of deferred tax assets and deferred tax liabilities is less than their recorded values. The value of the deferred tax account is independent of when that account will reverse.

This paper reports the results of an experiment designed to investigate how legal regimes affect social welfare. We investigate four legal regimes, each consisting of a liability rule (strict or negligence) and a damage measure (out-of-pocket or independent-of-investment). The results of the experiment are for the most part consistent with the qualitative predictions of Schwartz's (1997) model; however, subjects' actual choices deviate from the point predictions of the model. We explore whether these deviations arise because: (1) subjects form faulty anticipations of their counterparts' actions and/or (2) subjects do not choose the optimal responses given their anticipations. We find that subjects behave differently under the four regimes in terms of anticipation errors and departures from best responses. For example, subjects playing the role of auditors anticipate investments most accurately under the regime with strict liability combined with out-of-pocket damages, but are least likely to choose the optimal response given their anticipations. This finding implies that noneconomic factors likely play a role in determining subjects' choices.

This paper provides evidence that managers strategically select the prior-period earnings amount that is used as a benchmark to evaluate current-period earnings in quarterly earnings announcements. Managers are more likely to separately announce a prior-period gain from the sale of property, plant, and equipment (PPE) than a loss. This strategy provides the lowest possible benchmark for evaluating current earnings, thereby allowing the manager to highlight the most favorable change in earnings. This strategic disclosure behavior is more likely to occur when it prevents a negative earnings surprise. The observed strategic disclosure decisions are consistent with a conjecture by managers that the nonrecurring nature of the prior-period gain/loss will be forgotten unless it is separately announced. Consistent with this conjecture, there is some evidence that equity investors, one potential target of strategic reporting, use the benchmark that managers provide in earnings announcements to evaluate current earnings, even when the components of this benchmark have different persistence. However, cross-sectional analyses provide no evidence that managers ex post exploit the equity mispricing that occurs between the earnings announcement date and the release of the financial statements.

We present a simple model of managerial reporting bias for a setting in which the capital market is uncertain about the manager's reporting objective. In this setting, the manager's reporting bias reduces the value relevance of the manager's report; that is, it adds noise to the report. Through comparative static results, our model yields insights into factors that affect the slope and intercept terms in a regression of price on earnings. Specifically, we find that the information content of the manager's report, as captured by the earnings slope coefficient, falls as the private cost to the manager of biasing reports falls, and as the uncertainty about the manager's objective increases. We also find that the magnitude of the adjustment for the expected amount of bias, as captured by the absolute value of the intercept, falls as the uncertainty about the manager's objective increases. Finally, to highlight conditions under which managers would lobby to retain an option to bias reports (i.e., retain reporting flexibility), we analyze the effect of the option to bias on the manager's welfare. For example, we show that the ex ante benefit from biasing the report is positive if there is sufficient uncertainty about the manager's reporting objective.

Statement of Financial Accounting Standards (SFAS) No. 130 requires companies to report comprehensive income in a primary financial statement, but allows its presentation in either a statement of comprehensive income or a statement of stockholders' equity (Financial Accounting Standards Board [FASB] 1997). In an experiment, we examine whether and how alternative presentation formats affect nonprofessional investors' processing of comprehensive-income information, specifically, information disclosing the volatility of unrealized gains on available-for-sale marketable securities. The results show that nonprofessional investors' judgments of corporate and management performance reflect the volatility of comprehensive income only when it is presented in a statement of comprehensive income. We provide evidence consistent with our psychology-based framework that these findings occur because format affects how nonprofessional investors weight comprehensive-income information and not whether they acquire this information or how they evaluate it.