INTRODUCTION Earnings management represents the most frequently researched topic within financial accounting in the last two decades. The use of earnings management and its almost cavalier acceptance by financial statement preparers and users during the 1990’s led to the significant corporate reporting debacles of the early 2000’s (e.g., Enron, WorldCom, HealthSouth, etc.) and ultimately to the...

Forecasts of the financial status of Social Security's Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) programs and forecasts of the effects of various OASDI policy options on Americans would be improved if information about the earnings and labor force behavior of various population subgroups were included in projection models. Focusing on the projection of immigrant earnings, this articl...

In this article, the author uses large, Social Security administrative data sets to examine changes in earnings distributions in the United States over the 1980s through the mid-1990s. Because the earnings information contained in these data sets comes directly from the W-2 forms field by employers, self-reporting errors and top-coding problems, common in other data used for this type of analys...

Previous studies on the determinants of the choice of college major have assumed a constant probability of success across majors or a constant earnings stream across majors. Our model disregards these two restrictive assumptions in computing an expected earnings variable to explain the probability that a student will choose a specific major among four choices of concentrations. The construction...

In this article, the author uses large, Social Security administrative data sets to examine changes in earnings distributions in the United States over the 1980s and early 1990s. Because the earnings information contained in these data sets comes directly from the W-2 forms filed by employers, self-reporting errors and top-coding problems, common in other data used for this type of analysis, ar...

Under the retirement earnings test, Social Security benefits are reduced if earnings exceed specified amounts, although the benefit reduction is partly offset by future benefit increases. By imposing a tax on the earnings of beneficiaries, the earnings test provided a disincentive for them to supplement retirement income by working. The Senior Citizens Freedom to Work Act of 2000 eliminated the...

This study tests assertions that Economic Value Added (EVAt) is more highly associated with stock returns and firm values than accrual earnings, and evaluates which components of EVA, if any, contribute to these associations. Relative information content tests reveal earnings to be more highly associated with returns and firm values than EVA, residual income, or cash flow from operations. Incre...

Previous studies on the determinants of the choice of college major have assumed a constant probability of success across majors or a constant earnings stream across majors. Our model disregards these two restrictive assumptions in computing an expected earnings variable to explain the probability that a student will choose a specific major among four choices of concentrations. The construction...