We test the limits of arbitrage argument for the survival of irrationality-induced financial anomalies by sorting securities on their individual residual variability as a proxy for idiosyncratic risk – a commonly asserted limit to arbitrage – and comparing the strength of anomalous returns in low versus high residual variability portfolios. We find no support for the limits of arbitrage argument to explain undervaluation anomalies (small value stocks, value stocks generally, recent winners, and positive earnings surprises) but strong support for the limits of arbitrage argument to explain overvaluation anomalies (small growth stocks, growth stocks generally, recent losers, and negative earnings surprises). Other tests also fail to support the limits of arbitrage argument for the survival of overvaluation anomalies and suggest that at least some of the factor premiums for size, book-to-market, and momentum are unrelated to irrationality protected by limits to arbitrage.

Debt that is convertible into shares of a company other than the issuer is called exchangeable debt. Most firms that issue exchangeable debt hold large blocks of shares in several companies, and in this paper we study factors that influence the selection of a particular block to serve as the underlying asset for an exchangeable debt issue. Comparisons between issuers' holdings in different firms shed light on issuers' performance as monitors as well as their ability to engage in market timing. Holdings attached to these issues display superior past operating performance, but after the offer, both operating performance and stock returns decline. In contrast, we do not find similar systematic performance patters for the “other holdings” of exchangeable debt issuers.

We study the interrelation between conservatism and earnings management by examining the allowance for uncollectible accounts and its income statement counterpart, bad debt expense. We find that the allowance is conservative and that it has become more conservative over time. Conservatism may, however, facilitate earnings management. We find that firms manage bad debt expense downward (and even record income‐increasing bad debt expense) to meet or beat analysts’ earnings forecasts and that conservatism accentuates the extent to which firms manage bad debt expense. Further, we find that firms manage bad debt expense downward by drawing down previously recorded over‐accruals of bad debt expense that have accumulated on the balance sheet. An implication of our study is that tighter limits on the amount by which firms are permitted to understate net assets may reduce their ability to manage earnings.

Predictions of firm-level credit spreads based on the current spot and forward credit spreads can be significantly improved upon by using the information contained in the shape of the credit-spread curve. However, the current credit-spread curve is not a sufficient statistic for predicting future out-of-sample credit spreads; predictions can be significantly improved upon by exploiting the information contained in the shape of the riskless yield curve. In the presence of credit-spread and riskless factors, other macroeconomic, marketwide, and firm-specific risk variables do not significantly improve predictions of credit spreads. These results have important implications for credit-spreads modeling as well as for better understanding corporate capital structure and risk management policies.

We offer a selected survey of retail payments and suggest areas where additional research would prove useful. After summarizing eight papers presented at a recent Norges Bank (Central Bank of Norway) payment conference and published in this volume, we show how they, and many of the other papers presented there, have contributed to the payments literature. We also illustrate how institutional and other differences across countries led to different payment arrangements historically which now, due to technological innovation affecting bank costs, have made payment arrangements across countries more homogeneous.

This paper is a survey of the literature on boards of directors, with an emphasis on research done subsequent to the Benjamin E. Hermalin and Michael S. Weisbach (2003) survey. The two questions most asked about boards are what determines their makeup and what determines their actions? These questions are fundamentally intertwined, which complicates the study of boards because makeup and actions are jointly endogenous. A focus of this survey is how the literature, theoretical as well as empirical, deals—or on occasions fails to deal—with this complication. We suggest that many studies of boards can best be interpreted as joint statements about both the director-selection process and the effect of board composition on board actions and firm performance.

Legal scholars and accounting practitioners have expressed concern that the U.S. legal system might, in cases of undetected fraud, effectively penalize auditors for identifying and investigating fraud risks (AICPA 2004; Coffee 2004; Golden et al. 2006). This study draws on counterfactual reasoning theory to provide experimental evidence indicating that this concern is warranted. Consistent with counterfactual reasoning theory, I find that evaluators in a natural (i.e., between-participants) environment are more likely to hold auditors liable for failing to detect fraud when the auditors investigated for the perpetrated fraud, relative to when the auditors did not investigate for the fraud. Findings from a less natural within-participants experiment, however, indicate that the between-participant findings likely were unintentional: That is, the same evaluators, when later asked to judge alternative levels of fraud investigation simultaneously, are less likely to hold auditors liable for failing to detect fraud when the auditors investigated for the fraud, relative to when the auditors did not investigate for the fraud.

Using an experiment, I examine whether involvement in scorecard implementation can mitigate the effects of motivated reasoning that occur when the scorecard is framed as a causal chain rather than merely as a balanced set of measures. Psychological research on motivated reasoning suggests that managers will evaluate and interpret data in ways consistent with preferences, increasing their tendency to arrive at conclusions that are consistent with their desired conclusions (Kunda 1990). Consistent with that research, results of my study show that managers who are involved in selecting strategic initiatives perceive those initiatives as having been more successful than managers who are not involved in the initiative-selection process (holding constant actual scorecard performance). Results suggest further that simply framing the scorecard as a causal chain is not sufficient to mitigate these effects. However, framing the scorecard as a causal chain, in conjunction with involving managers in the selection of scorecard measures, mitigates the effects of motivated reasoning tied to manager involvement in initiative selection.