This article seeks to analyze the allocation of federal government discretionary spending among Brazil’s states. In Brazil, the bulk of federal public budget must be compulsorily executed. Personnel expenditures and social taxes, social security benefits and a series of constitutionally mandatory transfers to states and municipalities are examples of expenditures over which the government has n...

Discretionary Latitude and Relational Contracting We use economic experiments to examine the nature of relational trading under a menu of incomplete contracts ranging from the repeat purchase mechanism of Klein and Leffler (1981) to highly incomplete contracts that are completely unenforceable by third-parties. Our results suggest that, with barriers to complete contracting, increasing the degr...

Advertising is a critical competitive tool that shapes interactions among firms in the product market. Using third-party tracked data on advertising outlet costs, I find nontrivial portion of public firms, even those with intense activities, do not disclose expenses their financial statements, indicating significant disclosure discretion. further use category-level to develop firm-specific meas...

SYNOPSIS: Earnings management remains a popular topic of debate and discussion among investors, regulators, analysts, and the public. One mechanism that might mitigate earnings management is auditors’ industry expertise. Using a large sample of clients of Big 6 auditors, this research examines the association between auditor industry expertise, measured in terms of both auditor market share in ...

Which electorates receive targeted funding, and does targeted funding swing votes? To answer these questions, I focus on four discretionary programs introduced by the Australian federal government during the 2001-04 election cycle: Roads to Recovery, Stronger Families and Communities, Sustainable Regions, and Regional Partnerships. Together, these programs totalled well over $1 billion dollars....

I use a machine learning technique to classify the universe of active US equity mutual funds as quantitative , who mostly rely of computer-driven models and xed rules, or discretionary , who mostly rely on human judgement. I rst document several new facts about quantitative investing. I then propose an equilibrium model in which quantitative funds have a greater information processing capacity ...

The purpose of the study was to establish effect financing cash flow on stock return and test moderating discretionary accruals relationship between return. Panel data collected from 29 listed non-financial firms at NSE for 12 years 2007-2019. Fixed hierarchical regression analysis showed that had a positive significant while negatively moderate flows returns. concludes improves return, however...