We examine whether management earnings forecast errors exhibit serial correlation and how analysts understand the serial correlation property of management forecast errors (MFEs). MFEs should not exhibit serial correlation if managers efficiently process information in prior forecast errors and truthfully convey their earnings expectations through management forecasts. However, for long-horizon management forecasts of annual earnings, we find significantly positive serial correlation in MFEs, and sample self-selection does not seem to drive this phenomenon. Further analyses suggest that managers’ unintentional information processing bias contributes to this positive serial correlation. Analysts anticipate the intertemporal persistence of MFEs but underestimate the persistence level when reacting to management forecasts. Our findings have implications for market participants who rely on management forecasts to form earnings expectations, and also shed light on the efficiency of managerial decision making.

When information asymmetry is a major market friction, earnings forecasts can lead to higher price efficiency even after the information in forecasts completely dissipates upon earnings realizations. We show this in an experimental market that features information asymmetry (i.e., some traders possess differential private information). Earnings forecasts reduce information asymmetry and lead to prices that reflect a greater amount of private information. Traders can learn more about others' information from prices. This information learned from past prices continues to reduce information asymmetry and improve price efficiency even after earnings realizations. We contribute to the disclosure literature by showing the evidence that the learning‐from‐price effect amplifies the impact of public disclosure on price efficiency.

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.

Lenders often have lending relationships with borrowers' major customers (labeled as “supply-chain lenders”). We hypothesize that private information obtained from borrowers' major customers can facilitate more timely and precise evaluation of borrowers' creditworthiness; this potentially reduces supply-chain lenders' reliance on accounting conservatism in debt contracting. Consistently, we find that suppliers borrowing from supply-chain lenders provide less conservative financial statements than suppliers borrowing from non-supply-chain lenders at loan origination. This finding is more pronounced when supply-chain lenders are likely to have greater information advantage over non-supply-chain lenders. Based on latent factors that proxy for private information accessible from customers, we find that supply-chain lenders' information advantage relates to customers' future operational and financial risks. Further, in lending agreements, supply-chain lenders accept fewer accounting-based contractual terms, lower spreads, and longer loan maturity than non-supply-chain lenders. The overall evidence suggests that borrowers' major customers represent an important information channel that enables lenders to more effectively screen and monitor borrowers, thus weakening the debt contracting demand for accounting conservatism.

We investigate whether short interest affects supply chain partners' investments. This investigation is important for understanding the real effect of short sellers in facilitating stakeholders' investment decisions. Prior research suggests that short interest conveys negative news in a timely manner, which predicts future deterioration in firm fundamentals. We predict and find that a supplier's future investments decrease with its major customers' short interest. Consistent with predictions, this result is more pronounced when customers' short interest is more informative about their future performance, when customers have a more opaque information environment, and when suppliers incur lower customer switching costs. The results are robust when we use various approaches to address endogeneity concerns and establish causality. Our findings suggest that short sellers provide valuable information to supply chain partners when making investment decisions.

We examine whether home country investor protection and ownership structure affect cross‐listed firms' compliance with SOX ‐mandated internal control deficiency ( ICD ) disclosures. We develop a proxy for the likelihood of cross‐listed firms' ICD misreporting during the Section 302 reporting regime. For cross‐listed firms domiciled in weak investor protection countries, we have three main findings. First, firms whose managers control their firms and have voting rights in excess of cash flow rights are more likely to misreport ICD than other firms during the Section 302 reporting regime. Second, there is a positive association between the likelihood of ICD misreporting and voluntary deregistration from the SEC prior to the Section 404 effective date. Third, for firms that chose not to deregister, there is a positive association between the likelihood of ICD misreporting and the reporting of previously undisclosed ICD s during the Section 404 reporting regime. We do not find similar evidence for cross‐listed firms domiciled in strong investor protection countries. Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that, for cross‐listed firms domiciled in weak investor protection countries, managers who have the ability and incentive to expropriate outside minority shareholders are reluctant to disclose ICD s in order to protect their private control benefits. The results of our study should be of interest to regulators who wish to identify noncompliant firms for closer supervision, investors who wish to identify ex ante red flags for poor financial disclosure quality, and researchers who wish to understand the economic forces governing cross‐listed firms' financial disclosure behavior.

This study examines whether using cash‐flow‐based performance metrics (CFM) in CEO compensation contracts affects the design of loan contracts. Cash‐flow‐based performance evaluation explicitly motivates the CEO to improve the firm's cash flows, which may enhance debt repayment ability and reduce credit risk. We thus hypothesize that lenders, anticipating this incentive effect, offer lower loan spreads and reduce cash‐flow‐based performance covenants when firms use CFM in CEO compensation contracts. Consistent with our expectation, the use of CFM is associated with lower loan spreads and less use of cash‐flow‐based performance covenants. These findings remain robust after we account for endogeneity. Furthermore, these results are more pronounced in firms with higher credit risk or risk of cash flow shortfalls, suggesting that lenders consider internally generated cash flows more valuable when borrowers face higher external financing costs or have greater liquidity concerns. Additionally, we find that using CFM is associated with improved cash flow performance and enhanced creditworthiness, which supports the notion that CFM is an effective incentive mechanism. Overall, our evidence suggests that lenders consider the incentive effect of cash‐flow‐based performance evaluation in the debt contracting process.