The decision to disclose information concerning a firm's environmental liabilities is modeled as a sequential game involving the firm, a capital market, and outside stakeholders who can impose proprietary (political) costs on the firm. A partial disclosure equilibrium is derived in which firms reveal information strategically, maximizing the share‐value net of expected political costs. Inherent uncertainty regarding the existence and size of the liabilities creates a setting where outsiders are uncertain if management is informed about these liabilities, so firms can plausibly withhold “bad news”, that is, they do not disclose liabilities that exceed a threshold level. Three novel hypotheses are that a firm is more likely to disclose as (1) its pollution propensity increases, (2) outsiders' knowledge of its environmental liabilities increases, and (3) the risk of incurring proprietary costs decreases. Empirical support is found for the hypotheses, based on the accounting disclosures made by sample firms selected from the records of the Ontario Ministry of the Environment and Energy. Improved accounting and auditing standards for environmental disclosure would build on at least three implications of the study: To the extent that inherent uncertainty leaves managers with discretion as to what to disclose, the partial disclosure equilibrium result suggests that not all firms will comply with disclosure standards. Publishing broad environmental performance indicators for companies in nonaccounting outlets would increase public awareness of a manager's private information endowment, making voluntary accounting disclosures of the liabilities more likely. If a significant decline in stakeholder tolerance of pollution occurs, the expected proprietary costs of disclosing increase, and companies become less likely to disclose.

Relative performance evaluation (RPE) compensates managers on their relative performance against a peer group. Since observing more peers’ performance allows managers to better estimate the performance level required to achieve RPE targets, we conjecture that releasing earnings later than peers facilitates managers to achieve targets by exploiting last-minute reporting discretion. Empirical evidence is consistent with our conjecture. Further, managers tend to select peers that release earnings more timely and delay own firms’ earnings releases to be later than peers’ after RPE adoption. Our evidence suggests strategic timing of earnings release and discretionary reporting in response to relative performance evaluation.

We study the relationship between the amount of managed earnings and firms’ earnings performance and expected growth in a reporting model, where managers manipulate earnings to influence the valuation of firms’ equity while bearing a cost that is increasing and convex in the amount of managed earnings. In the unique revealing equilibrium to the model, firms with higher performance and growth over-report earnings by a larger amount because price responsiveness increases with earnings performance and growth. And earnings quality, defined as the proportion of true economic earnings in total reported earnings, increases with earnings performance but decreases with earnings growth. We conduct empirical tests on a large sample and a restatement sample using different proxies for earnings management. Results from the large sample tests support our predictions while results from the restatement sample tests are mixed. Our study provides an alternative explanation to the positive relationship between discretionary accruals estimated from the Jones model and firms’ performance and growth.

In an individual decision-making experiment, we investigate the impact of Tax Deferred Accounts (TDAs). We design six treatments to study various channels through which TDAs may affect decisions. Across both student and Mturk samples, we consistently find that TDAs significantly increase retirement wealth compared to environments with only one non-tax advantaged, liquid saving account. This increase is primarily explained by the requirement of making retirement savings decisions precede consumption decisions. Educating participants by providing a tax calculator has minimal effects. Our results highlight the effectiveness of TDAs in enhancing retirement preparedness and the significance of the order of consumption/savings decisions.

The objective of this study is to examine the market valuation of environmental capital expenditure investment related to pollution abatement in the pulp and paper industry. The total environmental capital expenditure of $8.7 billion by our sample firms during 1989–2000 supports the focus on this industry. In order to be capitalized, an asset should be associated with future economic benefits. The existing environmental literature suggests that investors condition their evaluation of the future economic benefits arising from environmental capital expenditure on an assessment of the firms' environmental performance. This literature predicts the emergence of two environmental stereotypes: low-polluting firms that overcomply with existing environmental regulations, and high-polluting firms that just meet minimal environmental requirements. Our valuation evidence indicates that there are incremental economic benefits associated with environmental capital expenditure investment by low-polluting firms but not high-polluting firms. We also find that investors use environmental performance information to assess unbooked environmental liabilities, which we interpret to represent the future abatement spending obligations of high-polluting firms in the pulp and paper industry. We estimate average unbooked liabilities of $560 million for high-polluting firms, or 16.6 percent of market capitalization.

Earnings non‐synchronicity reflects the extent to which firm‐specific factors determine a firm's earnings. Prior research suggests that high earnings non‐synchronicity impedes corporate outsiders' ability to process information. This study examines the impact of earnings non‐synchronicity on managers' decisions to provide earnings forecasts. We propose that high earnings non‐synchronicity motivates managers to issue earnings forecasts to reduce information asymmetry between managers and investors and to preempt costly information acquisition by outsiders. Consistently, we find a positive relation between earnings non‐synchronicity and managers' propensity to issue earnings forecasts, particularly long‐horizon forecasts. This positive relation is weaker when earnings are easier to predict based on the firm's earnings history and is stronger when the firm has higher institutional ownership and greater analyst following. We also find that the market's reaction to management forecasts increases with earnings non‐synchronicity. Overall, the evidence suggests that managers voluntarily provide earnings forecasts to alleviate the adverse consequences of earnings non‐synchronicity. These findings provide a more complete picture about the impact of earnings non‐synchronicity on a firm's information environment, and highlight the effect of the nature of information asymmetry on voluntary disclosures.

We investigate the association between errors in management forecasts of subsequent year earnings and current year accruals. In an uncertain operating environment, managers' assessments of their firms' business prospects are imperfect. Since managers' imperfect business assessments influence both accruals generation and earnings projection, we hypothesize that management earnings forecasts exhibit greater optimism (pessimism) when accruals are relatively high (low). Consistent with this hypothesis, we find a positive association between management earnings forecast errors and accruals. This positive association is stronger for firms operating in a more uncertain business environment and for firms in industries exhibiting greater covariation between accruals and growth-related activities. Moreover, this positive association is significant when accruals likely reflect managers' true beliefs about firms' business prospects, but is nonexistent when accruals are likely manipulated to boost managers' trading gains. Supplementary analysis reveals that the presence of management earnings forecasts does not significantly reduce accrual mispricing.

This study examines the explicit use of relative performance evaluation (RPE) in executive compensation contracts and the selection of RPE peers. Using S&P 1500 firms’ first proxy disclosures under the SEC’s 2006 executive compensation disclosure rules, we find that about 25 percent of our sample firms explicitly use RPE in setting executive compensation. We demonstrate that a lack of knowledge of both actual peer-group composition and the link between RPE-based performance targets and future peer performance significantly hinder the traditional implicit test from detecting RPE use. We also find that firms consider both costs and benefits of RPE as an incentive mechanism when deciding to use RPE. Finally, both efficient contracting and rent extraction considerations influence RPE peer selection, with the relative importance of these competing considerations depending on RPE firms’ performance.