Abstract This paper examines the effect of earnings announcements on information asymmetry as perceived by specialists. We use changes in quoted bid‐ask spreads and depths (relative to the average value in the non‐announcement period) as proxies for changes in information asymmetry in the market. To our knowledge, we are the first to employ a model that captures the simultaneous nature of the specialists' choice of spreads and depths in reaction to earnings news. We provide evidence that spreads are wider and depths are smaller before the release of earnings announcements. We also find that changes to depths are greater for announcements of quarterly earnings than for announcements of annual earnings and changes to spreads persist longer into the post‐announcement period when announcements are made outside trading hours. These changes to spreads and depths persist when earnings announcements are made after trading hours.

This paper examines the effect of earnings announcements on information asymmetry as perceived by specialists. We use changes in quoted bid-ask spreads and depths (relative to the average value in the non-announcement period) as proxies for changes in information asymmetry in the market. To our knowledge, we are the first to employ a model that captures the simultaneous nature of the specialists' choice of spreads and depths in reaction to earnings news. We provide evidence that spreads are wider and depths are smaller before the release of earnings announcements. We also find that changes to depths are greater for announcements of quarterly earnings than for announcements of annual earnings and changes to spreads persist longer into the post-announcement period when announcements are made outside trading hours. These changes to spreads and depths persist when earnings announcements are made after trading hours.

Abstract Vertical pay dispersion is the difference in pay across different hierarchical levels within an organization (Milkovich and Newman ). While vertical pay dispersion may be useful in attracting, retaining, and motivating highly skilled employees (Lazear and Rosen ; Lazear ; Prendergast ), our study investigates a potential disadvantage; specifically, the negative impact of perceived unfairness of vertical pay dispersion on employees' budgeting decisions. We predict and find that high vertical pay dispersion motivates subordinates to misreport costs to a greater extent than low vertical pay dispersion. Furthermore, we predict and find that superiors, on average, exercise more lenient cost controls when vertical pay dispersion is high rather than low. Supplemental analysis indicates superiors are more lenient on average because of their aversion to inequity caused by vertical pay dispersion. Our results suggest that high vertical pay dispersion can compromise the overall corporate budgeting environment, where higher levels of misreporting by subordinates goes unchecked by superiors.

ABSTRACT In this study, we examine the joint effect of vertical pay dispersion and peer observability on subordinates' misreporting choices. We adopt a participative budgeting setting in which two subordinates report to one superior, and we manipulate vertical pay dispersion (low/high) and peer observability (absent/present). Subordinates have private information about actual project costs and can over‐report project costs to the superior without detection and thus create budgetary slack. When a peer's reporting choices are observable, we predict and find that peer reporting choices have an asymmetric influence on the focal subordinates' reporting choices, and this asymmetric influence depends on the level of vertical pay dispersion. Specifically, we find that when vertical pay dispersion is low, subordinates who observe peer reports containing low slack misreport less , whereas observing peer reports that contain high slack has no significant effect. However, when vertical pay dispersion is high , subordinates who observe peer reports containing high slack misreport more , whereas observing peer reports that contain low slack has no significant effect. Driven by these asymmetric effects, subordinates misreport less in the presence of peer observability than in its absence when vertical pay dispersion is low and misreport more in the presence of peer observability than in its absence when vertical pay dispersion is high. Overall, our findings suggest that when a firm has a more egalitarian pay structure (i.e., low vertical pay dispersion), an open information policy is conducive to a more honest reporting environment, whereas under a more hierarchical pay structure (i.e., high vertical pay dispersion), open information policies can compromise the honesty of subordinates' reports.

The balanced scorecard is one of the major developments in management accounting in the past decade (Ittner and Larcker 2001). Lipe and Salterio (2000) find that managers ignore one of the key scorecard features, the inclusion of measures that are unique to the strategic objectives of a business unit, when making performance evaluation judgments. This study identifies and tests two approaches to reducing this “common measures bias.” We examine whether increasing effort via invoking process accountability (i.e., requiring managers to justify to their superior their performance evaluations) and/or improving the perceived quality of the balanced scorecard measures (i.e., via an independent third-party assurance report on the balanced scorecard) increases managers' usage of unique performance measures in their evaluations. Results suggest that either the requirement to justify an evaluation to a superior or the provision of an assurance report on the balanced scorecard increases the use of unique measures in managerial performance evaluation judgments. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.