To investigate how the possibility of earnings manipulation affects managerial compensation contracts, we study a two period agency setting in which a firm’s manager can engage in “window dressing” activities to manipulate reported accounting earnings. Earnings manipulation boosts the reported earnings in one period at the expense of the reported earnings in the other period. We show that the p...

Earnings Instability and Earnings Inequality in Urban China: 1989–2006 This paper investigates the evolution of earnings inequality in urban China from 1989 to 2006. After decomposing the variance of log of earnings into transitory and permanent two parts, we find that both components are important contributors to the total variance of earnings. We also find that the share of the transitory par...

We present new evidence on the evolution of black-white earnings differences among all men, including both workers and nonworkers. We study two measures: (i) the level earnings gap the racial earnings difference at a given quantile; and (ii) the earnings rank gap the difference between a black man’s percentile in the black earnings distribution and the position he would hold in the white earnin...

Earnings manipulation has become a widespread practice for US corporations. However, most studies in the literature focus on whether certain incentives would facilitate managers to manipulate earnings and there has been little evidence documenting the consequences of earnings manipulation. This paper fills this gap by examining how current accruals affect future earnings (the accrual effect) an...

Governments have always affected the economic environment as a policy maker. On the other hand, the presence of political connection as representatives of governments in companies affects their administrative and decision - making methods.Firms and managers manage them under environmental conditions by applying different approaches to earning management in order to achieve their goals.The gover...

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 collect a unique dataset of Twitter posts to examine the change in investor disagreement around earnings announcements. We find that investors’ opinions can either converge (reduced disagreement) or diverge (increased disagreement) around earnings announcements. While the convergence of opinion is associated with lower earnings announcement returns, the divergence of opinion is associated wi...

A variety of alternative definitions and sources of actual earnings realizations are available to investors. In addition to “traditional” earnings numbers produced in conformity with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) and filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), these alternative measures include the so-called Street earnings numbers that are based on proprietary de...

This paper studies market and analyst reactions to earnings (i) during a proxy contest for board seats and (ii) after a proxy-contest-induced management change. Despite indications of earnings management during the proxy contest, market and analyst reactions are more pronounced than in prior periods, and earnings surprises explain more of the cross-sectional variation in these reactions. Market...

In this paper I analyse the dynamic structure of earnings in Great Britain for the period 1991-1999 by decomposing the earnings covariance structure into its permanent and transitory components. Using information on monthly earnings of male full-time employees from the first nine waves of the British Household Panel Study I find that earnings inequality increases over the Nineties. However, ear...