I investigate stock price behavior associated with the allowance of LIFO for tax purposes. The analysis is structured as an event study of the Revenue Acts of 1938 and 1939. The results indicate a positive net market reaction to legislative events leading to LIFO's incorporation into the US tax code for the sample firms having the largest estimated LIFO tax benefits. I conclude the market revised its probabilities that firms most likely to benefit would avail themselves of the opportunity to use LIFO and defer taxes on inventory profits.

Earnings announcements, Informational content, Disclosures, Disclosure quality

We investigate (1) whether the variation in accounting standards across national boundaries relative to International Accounting Standards (IAS) has an impact on the ability of financial analysts to forecast non‐U.S. firms’ earnings accurately, and (2) whether analyst forecast accuracy changes after firms adopt IAS. IAS are a set of financial reporting policies that typically require increased disclosure and restrict management’s choices of measurement methods relative to the accounting standards of our sample firms’ countries of domicile. We develop indexes of differences in countries’ accounting disclosure and measurement policies relative to IAS, and document that greater differences in accounting standards relative to IAS are significantly and positively associated with the absolute value of analyst earnings forecast errors. Further, we show that analyst forecast accuracy improves after firms adopt IAS. More specifically, after controlling for changes in the market value of equity, changes in analyst following, and changes in the number of news reports, we find that the convergence in firms’ accounting policies brought about by adopting IAS is positively associated with the reduction in analyst forecast errors.

Inventory accounting method, LIFO, FIFO, Tax savings

The inability to estimate stockholder wealth effect magnitudes and hence disentangle them from changes in the stock market's assessment of the probability that a regulatory change will occur has hampered previous research in the economic consequences of accounting choices. This study measures cash flow effects independent of stock market behavior and thereby permits evidence of significant abnormal return behavior to be used to infer changes in the market's probability assessment of the imposition of a regulatory change, The study uses a seemingly unrelated regressions approach to investigate information events surrounding the issuance of IRS Revenue Procedure 80-55, Issued in late 1980, this rule stated that banks could no longer deduct interest paid on governmental time deposits collateralized by tax-exempt securities. Further, it was to be applied retroactively; and for firms in the sample used in this study, the average estimated tax liability caused by the retroactive provision was $24.2 million, or 5.6 percent of the market value of common stock. In addition to contributing to the economic consequences literature, this study also demonstrates the potential usefulness of capital market data in estimating the magnitude of probability revisions associated with IRS actions. Presumably such evidence is a relevant input in the social choice problem of whether an IRS action has imposed a "substantial impact" on affected parties.

This research investigates whether oil and gas producing firms use abnormal accruals and hedging with derivatives as substitutes to manage earnings volatility. Firms engaged in oil exploration and drilling are exposed to two kinds of risks that can cause earnings volatility: oil price risk and exploration risk. Firms can use abnormal accrual choices and/or derivatives to reduce earnings volatility caused by oil price risk, but cannot directly hedge the operational risk of unsuccessful drilling. Because hedging and using abnormal accruals are costly activities, and because prior research suggests managers do not eliminate all volatility (Haushalter 2000; Barton 2001), we expect that, at the margin, managers will use these smoothing mechanisms as substitutes to manage earnings volatility. Our results suggest a sequential process whereby managers of oil and gas producing firms first determine the extent to which they will use derivatives to hedge oil price risk, and then, especially in the fourth quarter, manage residual earnings volatility by trading off abnormal accruals and hedging with derivatives to smooth income.

We assess the usefulness of deferred tax expense in detecting earnings management. Assuming greater discretion under GAAP than under tax rules, and assuming managers exploit such discretion to manage income upward primarily in ways that do not affect current taxable income, then such earnings management will generate book-tax differences that increase deferred tax expense. Our results provide evidence consistent with deferred tax expense generally being incrementally useful beyond total accruals and abnormal accruals derived from two Jones-type models in detecting earnings management to avoid an earnings decline and to avoid a loss. Only total accruals is incrementally useful in detecting earnings management to meet analysts' earnings forecasts. Deferred tax expense is more accurate than the accrual measures in classifying firm-years as successfully avoiding a loss, whereas no one measure is more accurate in classifying firm-years as avoiding an earnings decline or meeting analysts' forecasts.

We consider stock markets in 20 countries to investigate whether the accrual anomaly (Sloan 1996), characterized by U.S. stock prices overweighting the role of accrual persistence, is a local manifestation of a global phenomenon.We explore whether the occurrence of the anomaly is related to country differences in accounting and institutional structures, and examine alternative explanations for its occurrence. We find stock prices overweight accruals in general, with accruals overweighting occurring in countries with a common law relative to a code law tradition. Using firmlevel data on a country-by-country basis, we document the occurrence of the anomaly in four countries, Australia, Canada, the U.K., and the U.S., and also in a sample of American Depository Receipts (ADRs) of firms domiciled in countries where we do not detect the anomaly. Using country-level data, we confirm the anomaly is more likely to occur in countries having a common law tradition, and also in countries allowing extensive use of accrual accounting and having a lower concentration of share ownership. Additional analyses reveal that earnings management and barriers to arbitrage best explain the anomaly.

This study provides an explanation for the anomalous significantly negative price-earnings relation using the simple earnings capitalization model for firms that report losses. We hypothesize and find that including book value of equity in the valuation specification eliminates the negative relation. This suggests that the simple earnings capitalization model is misspecified and the negative coefficient on earnings for loss firms is a manifestation of that misspecification. Furthermore, we provide evidence on three competing explanations for the role that book value of equity plays in valuing loss firms. Specifically, we investigate whether the importance of book value in cross-sectional valuation models stems from its role as (1) a control for scale differences (Barth and Kallapur 1996), (2) a proxy for expected future normal earnings (Ohlson 1995; Penman 1992), or (3) a proxy for loss firms' abandonment option (Berger et al. 1996; Barth et al. 1996; Burgstahler and Dichev 1997). Our results do not support the conjecture that the importance of book value in cross-sectional valuation stems primarily from its role as a control for scale differences. Rather, the results are consistent with book value serving as a value-relevant proxy for expected future normal earnings for loss firms in general, and as a proxy for abandonment option for loss firms most likely to cease operations and liquidate.

Enterprise systems ( ES s) are widely used to support business processes along the enterprise value chain. It has been shown that ES s, by integrating business functions and making information about day‐to‐day activities available, enhance operational transparency and improve the internal information environment. However, while ES ‐based business infrastructures can offer many benefits, their prevalence and increased complexity have also brought new challenges to external auditors. Motivated by the prominence of this issue for auditors and regulators and by the scarcity of research jointly examining ES s and auditors’ work, we investigate whether the presence and extent of client firms’ ES implementations are related to the quality and efficiency of auditors’ work. Using proprietary archival data on ES implementations and controlling for self‐selection, we find that ES implementation improves the quality and efficiency of current and future years’ audit work. Specifically, there are fewer restatements, a greater likelihood of auditors issuing going‐concern opinions to firms that do not survive, higher accruals‐based auditing quality, a lower likelihood of Form 10‐K filing delays, and generally lower audit fees. We further show that the benefits of ES s generally increase with the scope of implementation and are generally greater when the ES includes accounting and finance systems. Inconsistent with improvement in the quality of auditors’ work, we find no evidence that ES s help auditors identify material weaknesses in advance of restatement announcements and we find that, even in the presence of ES s, auditors issue an excessive number of going‐concern opinions to clients that survive.