W document considerable return comovement associated with accruals after controlling for other common factors. An accrual-based factor-mimicking portfolio has a Sharpe ratio of 0.16, higher than that of the market factor or the SMB and HML factors of Fama and French. According to rational frictionless asset pricing models, the ability of accruals to predict returns should come from the loadings...

Axons must be supported by a strong and flexible cytoskeleton. New 'super-resolution' imaging of the submembranous axonal cytoskeleton reveals that it is organized in a periodic, ladder-like structure with alternating rings of actin linked together by intervening complexes of spectrin.

Earnings management is an important part of current accounting studies. Many of those studies concentrate on accruals. This study critically evaluates frequently used accrual models. The Jones model was the first econometric approach to estimating discretionary accruals. Even though it is subject to several limitations, such as model misspecification, omitted-variables, and errors-in-variables ...

We examine how adjustments to earnings during year-end audits affect measures of earnings quality. There are four key findings. First, audit adjustments cause earnings to become smoother and more persistent. Second, the adjustments result in higher accrual quality. Third, audit adjustments have a larger negative effect on signed accruals than absolute accruals. Fourth, the adjustments do not re...

We propose market timing strategies aiming to exploit the aggregate accruals’ return forecasting power. We examine several performance metrics of the aggregate accruals based market timing strategy such as excess portfolio return, Sharpe ratio, and Jensen’s alpha. We provide robust evidence that, relative to the passive investment strategy of buying and holding the stock market, the market timi...

We test the effect of audit effort on earnings management using a unique database of hours worked by auditors on 9,738 audits in Greece between 1994 and 2002. When audit hours are lower, (1) abnormal accruals are more often positive than negative, (2) positive abnormal accruals are larger, and (3) companies are more likely to manage earnings upwards in order to meet or beat the zero earnings be...