In this study we specify a simple earnings model, present managerial discretion hypotheses from existing literature, and assume efficient markets in order to evaluate five discretionary-accrual models. The five discretionary accrual models are the same as those evaluated in Dechow, Sloan, and Sweeney [1995]. The models are Healy [1985]; DeAngelo [1986]; Jones [1991]; Jones as modified in Dechow, Sloan, and Sweeney [1995]; and the industry model proposed by Dechow and Sloan [1991]. We specify three managerial discretion hypotheses. First, under the performance measure hypothesis, discretionary accruals help managers produce a reliable and more timely measure of firm performance (i.e., earnings) than using nondiscretionary accruals alone. Second, the opportunistic accrual management hypothesis is that discretionary accruals are employed to hide poor performance or postpone a portion of unusually good current earnings to future years. Finally, discretionary accruals are noise in earnings. This is the noise hypothesis. Our contribution is to make the joint hypotheses explicit and generate explicit predictions about the relative variability of earnings components,

We examine the role of firms’ internal information quality (IIQ) in designing executive incentive contracts. We find that higher IIQ is associated with a greater number of performance metrics and increased dissimilarity from peer firms’ contracts, particularly along non-financial dimensions. These relations hold when we examine changes in IIQ that are likely induced by plausibly exogenous shifts in two financial accounting standards. We further find that incorporating more numerous and more dissimilar non-financial metrics is positively associated with future profitability, but only when IIQ is high. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that the quality of a firm’s internal information is a friction in performance metric selection.

[We compute and compare risk-adjusted CEO pay in the United States and United Kingdom, where the risk adjustment is based on estimated risk premiums stemming from the equity incentives borne by CEOs. Controlling for firm and industry characteristics, we find that U.S. CEOs have higher pay, but also bear much higher stock and option incentives than U.K. CEOs. Using reasonable estimates of risk premiums, we find that risk-adjusted U.S. CEO pay does not appear to be large compared to that of U.K. CEOs. We also examine differences in pay and equity incentives between a sample of non-U.K. European CEOs and a matched sample of U.S. CEOs, and find that risk-adjusting pay may explain about half of the apparent higher pay for U.S. CEOs.]

We empirically examine standard agency predictions about how performance measures are optimally weighted to provide CEO incentives. Consistent with prior empirical research, we document that the relative weight on price and non-price performance measures in CEO cash pay is a decreasing function of the relative variances. Agency theory speaks to the weights in total compensation (annual total pay and changes in the CEO's equity portfolio value), however, and we document that very little of CEOs' total incentives come from cash pay. We also document that variation in the relative weight on price and non-price performance measures in CEO total compensation is an increasing function of the relative variances. The conflicting results using total compensation indicate that existing findings on cash pay cannot be interpreted as evidence supporting standard agency predictions. Based on our results, we suggest approaches for future research on performance measure use in CEO total compensation.

In this paper, we derive a measure of diluted EPS that incorporates the economic implications of the dilutive effects of employee stock options. We show that the existing FASB treasury-stock method of accounting for the dilutive effects of outstanding options systematically understates the options' dilutive effect, and thus overstates reported EPS. Using firm-wide data on 731 employee stock option plans, our proposed measure suggests that economic dilution from options is, on average, 100 percent greater than dilution in reported diluted EPS using the FASB treasury-stock method. We examine the implications of our analysis for stock price valuation, the price-earnings relation, and the return-earnings relation. We demonstrate analytically that when firms have options outstanding, empirical applications of equity valuation models that use reported per-share earnings as an input (e.g., Ohlson 1995) yield upwardly biased estimates of the market value of common stock. We predict that when the difference between our measure of economic dilution from options and the FASB treasury-stock method dilution from options is greater, the observed return-earnings and price-earnings coefficients will be smaller, and we provide some (albeit weak) empirical support for this prediction.

We re-examine the claim that many corporations are underleveraged in that they fail to take full advantage of debt tax shields. We show prior results suggesting underleverage stems from biased estimates of tax benefits from interest deductions. We develop improved estimates of marginal tax rates using a non-parametric procedure that produces more accurate estimates of the distribution of future taxable income. We show that additional debt would provide firms with much smaller tax benefits than previously thought, and when expected distress costs and difficult-to-measure non-debt tax shields are also considered, it appears plausible that most firms have tax-efficient capital structures.

We review recent literature on the role of financial reporting transparency in reducing governance-related agency conflicts among managers, directors, and shareholders, as well as in reducing agency conflicts between shareholders and creditors, and offer researchers some suggested avenues for future research. Key themes include the endogenous nature of debt contracts and governance mechanisms with respect to information asymmetry between contracting parties, the heterogeneous nature of the informational demands of contracting parties, and the heterogeneous nature of the resulting governance and debt contracts. We also emphasize the role of a commitment to financial reporting transparency in facilitating informal multiperiod contracts among managers, directors, shareholders, and creditors.

We find mixed support for the hypothesis that a “New Economy” subperiod occurred in the late 1990s in which the relation between equity value and traditional financial variables differs from previous periods. We examine a regression model of equity value on financial variables over 25 years for a broad firm sample and for firm subsamples thought to be emblematic of the New Economy. We find the regression model's explanatory power declined in the New Economy subperiod for all firm subsamples. However, for all subsamples, the regression model's structure during the New Economy subperiod is not unusual compared to other subperiods.

A growing literature documents that complex financial statements negatively affect the information environment. In this paper, we examine whether managers use voluntary disclosure to mitigate these negative effects. Employing cross-sectional and within-firm designs, we find a robust positive relation between financial statement complexity and voluntary disclosure. This relation is stronger when liquidity decreases around the filing of the financial statements, is stronger when firms have more outside monitors, and is weaker when firms have poor performance and greater earnings management. We also examine the relation between financial statement complexity and voluntary disclosure using two quasi-natural experiments. Employing a generalized difference-in-differences design, we find firms affected by the adoption of complex accounting standards (e.g., SFAS 133 and SFAS 157) increase their voluntary disclosure to a greater extent than unaffected firms. Collectively, these findings suggest managers use voluntary disclosure to mitigate the negative effects of complex financial statements on the information environment.

We examine the press’ role in monitoring and influencing executive compensation practice using more than 11,000 press articles about CEO compensation from 1994 to 2002. Negative press coverage is more strongly related to excess annual pay than to raw annual pay, suggesting a sophisticated approach by the media in selecting CEOs to cover. However, negative coverage is also greater for CEOs with more option exercises, suggesting the press engages in some degree of “sensationalism.” We find little evidence that firms respond to negative press coverage by decreasing excess CEO compensation or increasing CEO turnover.