This paper explores whether insiders who have shown noncompliance with the tax law (‘noncompliant insiders’) are more prone to exploit their information advantage in insider trading, compared to other insiders (‘compliant insiders’). Our empirical results from analyzing archival data of all insider trades in Sweden show that noncompliant insiders use more of their information advantage to trade their insider stocks shortly before significant stock price changes, compared to compliant insiders. These results remain similar after controlling for various insider- and firm-specific determinants of insider returns, including firm and year fixed effects. We believe that our results are of interest for academics and regulatory authorities monitoring and screening insider trading activity.

We explore why insiders engage in informed trading, given the surprisingly small average insider returns reported in the literature and the potential costs involved. We begin by proposing a model of an insider's decision to engage in insider trading. We then empirically test the model's predictions using archival data of corporate insiders in Sweden. Consistent with the model, we find that less wealthy insiders are more likely to time their insider selling, and to sell in greater magnitudes, prior to abnormal price declines than wealthy insiders. We also find that less wealthy insiders with lower risk aversion as measured by their criminal behavior are particularly prone to timing their selling to avoid price declines.

This paper investigates the role of the financial environment in the stock market valuation of research and development (R&D) spending by firms. We examine the importance of equity financing relative to bank financing and the importance of both relative to the size of the economy on the stock market valuation of R&D expenditures. Empirical analysis of the Compustat Global Vantage firm-level data indicates that, the more market-based a financial system is, the more R&D expenditures are valued by the stock market. The degree of financial development does not appear to be important. Our results remain materially unchanged after controlling for numerous firm and country differences.

In this paper, we examine if corporate insiders have other motives for trading besides exploitation of private information. Our results show that insiders’ portfolio re-balancing objectives, tax considerations and behavioral biases play the most important role in their trading decisions. We also find that insiders who have allocated a great (small) proportion of their wealth to insider stock sell more (less) before bad news earnings disclosures. Finally, insider selling is informative for future returns among those insiders who have the greatest proportion of wealth allocated to insider stocks.

Prior research reports that analysts focus on street earnings, which are measures that typically exceed GAAP earnings. Using a sample of CEO turnovers from 1993 to 2016 we show that the likelihood and speed of forced CEO turnover - but not voluntary turnover - are higher when analysts exclude income-decreasing items. The association between exclusions and forced turnovers is particularly pronounced for high magnitude exclusions. We also show that greater street exclusion of income-decreasing items, the lower CEO bonus payouts. We find that boards use audited and more conservative GAAP earnings in evaluating and dismissing CEOs, except in the recent period of 2010–2016.

This article examines the effect of managers' personality trait of extraversion on the voluntary disclosure of their firms. Our results from analyzing archival data from Sweden show that the extraversion scores of CEOs and CFOs obtained from psychological tests are positively associated with the voluntary disclosure scores of their firms. The effect of managerial extraversion on disclosure is, moreover, stronger when managerial discretion or managerial job demands are higher. We also find that extraversion affects managers' disclosure styles during earnings conference calls.

This study examines the role of an individual auditor's cognitive ability in delivering high‐quality audits. Our results from analyzing archival data from Sweden show that audit partners' IQ scores obtained from psychological tests are positively associated with going‐concern audit reporting accuracy and audit fee premiums. We also find some, albeit weak, evidence that audit partners' IQ scores are negatively associated with the income‐increasing abnormal accruals of the client. These results suggest that, although audit services are standardized through various control mechanisms and audits are conducted by teams rather than by individual auditors, the cognitive ability of audit partners responsible for an audit remains important in delivering high‐quality audit services.