In this paper, I examine a new approach for measuring earnings quality, defined as the closeness of reported earnings to “permanent earnings,” based on firm decisions with regard to capital and labor investments. Specifically, I measure earnings quality as the contemporaneous association between changes in the levels of capital and labor investment and the change in reported earnings. This appr...

Previous research has shown that loan loss provisions and security gains and losses are used to manage banks’ net income. However, these income components are reported below banks largest operating component, net interest income (NII). This study extends the literature by examining whether banks exploit the accounting permitted under past and current hedge accounting standards to manage NII by ...

We document that firms’ management of accounting earnings increased steadily from 1987 until the passage of the Sarbanes Oxley Act (SOX), with a significant increase during the period prior to SOX, followed by a significant decline after passage of SOX. However, the increase in earnings management preceding SOX was primarily in poorly performing industries. We also show that the informativeness...

the valuation of companies is often complicated by a failure to understand how share prices are set. many senior executive believe that stock prices are set by some vague combination of earnings, growth rates, returns, book values, cash flows, dividends and trading volumes. in this article two general models of valuation are introduced. the firs t one is the accounting model which states that s...

This paper investigates the slowdown in earnings assimilation of recent immigrants to the U.S. I find that recent immigrant cohorts have experienced slower assimilation in terms of their occupational task requirements compared to past cohorts. This occupational task assimilation slowdown can explain a large portion of the slowdown in earnings assimilation. Furthermore, accounting for changing r...

Long historical averages of real earnings help forecast present values of future real dividends. With aggregate U.S. stock market data (1871-1986), a vector-autoregressive forecast of the present value of future dividends is, for each year, roughly a weighted average of moving-average arnings and current real price, with between two thirds and three fourths of the weight on the earnings measure...

There are two approaches which investors can exercise when using accounting information are commonly discussed, either to the use of financial reporting to value the company or the use of financial reporting to assess the management's stewardship of the company. Despite the fact that US GAAP, IFRS, and UK GAAP are all market oriented sets of accounting standards, both FASB and IASB are more inc...