During the year prior to management buyout (MBOs) announcements, some target firms exhibit abnormally high discretionary expenses in selling, general and administration, abnormally low discretionary accruals, and realize losses from asset sales. Higher discretionary expenses and losses from asset sales are associated with lower pre-MBO abnormal stock returns, especially for firms with higher in...

This paper examines the stock price sensitivity to dividend changes. The Dividend Signaling, the Free-Cash-Flow, the Maturity and the Catering Hypotheses all predict an average positive (negative) reaction to announcement of a dividend increase (decrease). However, these hypotheses have different cross-sectional predictions. This paper documents that the positive stock price response to dividen...

Using an earnings management model in which managers can manipulate the earnings announcement when the firm’s internal control system fails, this paper proposes a measure of earnings quality, based on Ganuza and Penalva’s (2010) notion of integral precision that can be estimated using either the time series of earnings or the relation between earnings and prices. I show that large scale frauds ...

Temporary help services (THS) employment has been growing in size, particularly among disadvantaged workers. An extended policy debate focuses on the low earnings, limited benefits, and insecurity that such jobs appear to provide. We investigate the earnings and wage differentials observed between THS and other jobs in a sample of disadvantaged workers. We find lower quarterly earnings at THS j...

Recent empirical research has found that when a firm releases its earnings report earlier than expected, its stock price rises, on average, while if the report is late, its stock price declines. The analysis here focuses on two alternative explanations for these findings, each based on the premise that some firms with unfavorable earnings increase their reported income through earnings manageme...

In 1989 the Hong Kong government embarked on a program to increase the provision of first-year first-degree places. The expansion of tertiary education represents a large and exogenous increase in supply of university graduates to the territory. This paper measures the labor market effects of the expansion program by studying the changes in earnings premium for university graduates. Two alterna...

This study tests the Miller (1977) hypothesis as an explanation for stock price behavior around technology firms’ earnings announcements during the late 1990s. Specifically, we examine whether the anomalous tendency for stock prices to increase (decrease) before (after) earnings announcements during this period is associated with an increase (decrease) in investor disagreement before (after) th...

We examine the stock price reaction to announcements that firms are alleged to be doing fraudulent financial reporting or manipulating earnings, using a sample of firms cited by the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) in its Accounting and Auditing Enforcement Releases (AAERs) during the time period 1985-2005. We find a total 14% drop in stock price over a three day window surrounding the anno...