This study finds that greater asymmetric timeliness of earnings in reflecting good and bad news is associated with slower resolution of investor disagreement and uncertainty at earnings announcements. These findings indicate that a potential cost of asymmetric timeliness is added complexity from requiring investors to disaggregate earnings into good and bad news components to assess the implications of the earnings announcement for their investment decisions. Such a disaggregation impedes the speed with which investor disagreement and uncertainty resolve. The findings indicate that asymmetric timeliness also delays price discovery at earnings announcements. We also find a positive relation between asymmetric timeliness and stock returns during the earnings announcement period after the initial price reaction to the announcement, which is consistent with resolution of valuation uncertainty. However, we do not find clear evidence of more net stock purchases during this period by insiders of firms with greater asymmetric timeliness.

This study examines whether the implementation of industry-specific accounting standards helps capital market participants in making decisions about providing capital to firms. We predict and find an, on average, increase in firms’ capital growth in years following implementation of the relevant industry standard. The increase in capital growth arises primarily from equity issuances and is attributable to the implementation of the standards rather than industry-specific trends or economic shocks. We explore heterogeneity in industry standards and find more pronounced effects for (i) industry standards that reveal new information, provide explicit guidance, or increase accounting uniformity, and (ii) small firms, firms with greater information asymmetry, and firms with greater capital constraints before implementation of the standards. We also find evidence consistent with two channels explaining the documented increase in capital flows: reduction of information asymmetry and increase in financial statement comparability.

This study provides evidence that private loan issuance offers opportunities for borrowers to learn new information about their own risks and subsequently disclose such information in their risk factor disclosures (RFDs) to satisfy lenders’ demand for transparency about borrowers’ risks. This loan issuance effect on risk disclosures is more pronounced when greater learning opportunities are present and when lenders have a stronger demand for borrowers’ risk information transparency. Further analyses suggest that the enhanced risk disclosures following loan issuance not only benefit lenders by reducing the costs of accessing the secondary credit markets, but also create spillover benefits for equity investors by increasing risk information about the borrower and reducing uncertainty about the borrower’s risk. Taken together, these findings suggest that borrowers’ private interactions with lenders provide new opportunities for managers to generate and reflect fresh information in corporate risk disclosures, ultimately benefiting a wide range of capital market participants. Data Availability: Data are available from the sources identified in the paper.

This study investigates the influence of managerial incentives to meet or beat the zero earnings benchmark on labor cost behavior of private Belgian firms. We posit that relative to managers of firms reporting healthy profits, managers meeting or beating the zero earnings benchmark will increase labor costs to a smaller extent when activity increases and decrease labor costs to a larger extent when activity decreases. This should take the form of more symmetric labor cost behavior for firms that report a small profit. Our findings are consistent with this prediction. Using detailed employee data, we show that managers of firms reporting a small profit focus on firing employees who are relatively low cost to fire. To protect their reputation in the labor market, managers of other firms, particularly those reporting healthy profits, limit the numbers of dismissals and react to activity changes by changing the number of hours that employees work. Data Availability: Data are available from the sources referred to in the text.

This study examines whether application of IFRS by non-US firms results in accounting amounts comparable to those resulting from application of US GAAP by US firms. IFRS firms have greater accounting system and value relevance comparability with US firms when IFRS firms apply IFRS than when they applied domestic standards. Comparability is greater for firms that adopt IFRS mandatorily, firms in common law and high enforcement countries, and in more recent years. Earnings smoothing, accrual quality, and timeliness are potential sources of the greater comparability. Although application of IFRS has enhanced financial reporting comparability with US firms, significant differences remain.

This study examines the effect of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (JOBS Act) on information uncertainty in IPO firms. The JOBS Act creates a new category of issuer, the Emerging Growth Company (EGC), and exempts EGCs from several disclosures required for non-EGCs. Our findings are consistent with proprietary cost concerns motivating EGCs to eliminate some of the previously mandatory disclosures, which increases information uncertainty in the IPO market, attracts investors who rely more on private information, and leads EGCs to provide additional post-IPO disclosures to mitigate the increased information uncertainty. Our results also are consistent with agency explanations, whereby EGCs exploit the JOBS Act provisions to avoid compensation-related disclosures, which results in larger IPO underpricing for such firms. Overall, we provide evidence on how reduced mandatory disclosure affects the IPO market.

Using a comprehensive sample of switches to and from the largest auditors (i.e., the Big N), we examine empirically whether the sensitivity of Big N auditor switches to client risk and misalignment changed between the pre- and post-Enron periods. Although we find an increase in the sensitivity to client misalignment, the sensitivity to client risk generally decreases. The results are consistent with Big N auditors rebalancing their audit client portfolios in response to post-Enron capacity constraints arising from the supply of former Arthur Andersen clients and the audit demands imposed by Sarbanes-Oxley rather than increasing their sensitivity to client risk. Additional evidence indicates that the Sarbanes-Oxley demand shock did not affect Big N auditor switching behavior incremental to the initial Andersen supply shock.

This study provides evidence on the relevance and reliability of option pricing-based value estimates for bonds and their components, i.e., conversion, call, put and sinking fund features. Findings reveal component value estimates represent large fractions of bond par value, and a fundamental components approach to account for corporate debt results in key financial statement amounts significantly different from those presently recognized. Component value estimates and financial statement amounts vary significantly with component estimation order. Thus, bond value estimates potentially meet the FASE3's relevance criterion. However, estimate variation across component estimation orders and comparisons of estimates to available benchmarks indicate bond value estimates lack reliability.