This study examines whether earnings changes convey information in bond markets and finds a significant positive (negative) reaction to unexpected earnings increases (decreases). The results are consistetit whether earnings announcements precede or follow dividend announcements. Thus, earnings surprises convey information to bond markets and changes in firm value are split among bondholders and...

In asserting that the number of firms reporting small profits is abnormally high, thus suggesting that earnings management has taken place, accounting researchers assume that the distribution of reported earnings should be smooth for unmanaged earnings. This has never in fact been demonstrated. This article seeks to confirm this assumption through a laboratory experiment, and also sets out to i...

This paper examines earnings changes surrounding firms' decisions to initiate or omit dividend payments. Firms that initiate (omit) dividend payments have positive (negative) earnings changes both before and after the dividend policy change. The subsequent earnings changes arc positively related to the dividend announcement return. Also, the stock price reactions at the announcement of subseque...

This note examines trends in elective deferrals from 1990 through 2001. Elective deferrals of earnings―401(k)-type plans and similar arrangements for deferring income taxation of earnings placed in retirement accounts―first became common in the early 1980s and have grown in popularity since then. Trends in elective deferrals are potentially important in analyzing historical earnings data and in...

R research has shown that managers in publicly traded companies facing earnings pressure—the pressure to meet or beat securities analysts’ earnings forecasts—may make business decisions to improve short-term earnings. Analysts’ forward-looking performance forecasts can serve as powerful motivation for managers, but may also encourage them to undertake short-term actions detrimental to future co...

This article uses longitudinal data for the United States and Great Britain to examine the impact of residential mobility and childbirth on the earnings of women, their family earnings, and the related division of earnings by gender. This project is the first to compare explicitly the impact of childbirth and family migration on women's earnings, and it extends prior cross-sectional and longitu...

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...

It is now commonly accepted that earnings inequality – that is, the gap in earnings between lowand high-wage workers, became more pronounced in Canada throughout the 1980s.1 This is in contrast to inequality trends in family income,2 which have changed little (Beach and Slotsve, 1996). This article updates and adds to the earnings inequality story by addressing two issues: 1) the evolution of t...