We investigate whether CEOs manage the timing of their voluntary disclosures around stock option awards. We conjecture that CEOs manage investors’ expectations around award dates by delaying good news and rushing forward bad news. For a sample of 2,039 CEO option awards by 572 firms with fixed award schedules, we document changes in share prices and analyst earnings forecasts around option awards that are consistent with our conjecture. We also provide more direct evidence based on management earnings forecasts issued prior to award dates. Our findings suggest that CEOs make opportunistic voluntary disclosure decisions that maximize their stock option compensation.

We investigate firms’ choices between the purchase and pooling methods in stock-for-stock acquisitions. We find that in acquisitions with large step-ups to targets’ net assets, CEOs with earnings-based compensation are more likely to choose pooling and avoid the earnings ‘penalty’ associated with purchases. We find no association between stock-based compensation and the purchase–pooling choice, suggesting that managers are not concerned about implications of large step-ups for firms’ equity values. We also find that the likelihood of purchase increases with debt contracting costs, consistent with its favorable balance sheet effects, and with costs of qualifying for pooling, particularly the restriction of share repurchases.

Although researchers have documented gains from insider trading, the sources of private information leading to information asymmetry and insider gains have not been comprehensively investigated. We focus on research and development (R&D)—an increasingly important yet poorly disclosed productive input—as a potential source of insider gains. Our findings, for the period from 1985 to 1997 indicate that insider gains in R&D‐intensive firms are substantially larger than insider gains in firms without R&D. Insiders also take advantage of information on planned changes in R&D budgets. R&D is thus a major contributor to information asymmetry and insider gains, raising issues concerning management compensation, incentives, and disclosure policies.