We investigate the role of gender on the aggressiveness of sell-side analysts’ questions during earnings conference calls. Our tests reveal that the verbal aggressiveness of analysts’ questions is significantly associated with both the gender of the analyst asking the question and the gender of the CEO fielding the question. First, we find that male analysts are more verbally aggressive than female analysts. Specifically, male analysts’ questions are more direct and more likely to be followed with further questions, to have a preface statement, and to be negative, all of which are consistent with verbal aggressiveness. Second, male analysts’ questions to female CEOs are more aggressive than their questions to male CEOs. Gender-based verbal aggressiveness appears to be associated with analysts’ career trajectories: Female analysts who ask aggressive questions have a higher likelihood of becoming “star” analysts, whereas we fail to find such evidence for male analysts.

Firms are increasingly turning to social media platforms for complaint handling. Previous research and practitioners’ reports highlight the benefits of complaint handling on social media, urging firms to provide prompt and detailed responses to complaints. However, little research has explored the possible drawbacks of such practices, especially when responses inadvertently further publicize complaints. Utilizing two unique data sets in a series of observational and quasiexperimental analyses, this research provides the first evidence of “complaint publicization” in social media, a phenomenon in which firm responses to complaints on popular social media platforms increase the potential public exposure of complaints. This negative effect can outweigh any positive customer care–signaling impact from firm responses. The authors show that a response strategy that engenders a high level of complaint publicization (e.g., providing detailed responses through multiple communication exchanges with a complainant) could negatively impact perceived quality and firm value, diminish the positive impact of a firm’s own posts, and increase the volume of future complaints. Additional analyses reveal that these adverse impacts are stronger for firms that are targeted by retail investors. The authors also uncover specific response strategies and styles that could mitigate these effects.

Concerns are commonly raised that strong public unions extract generous pension benefits from state governments and are the cause of states’ burdensome pension obligations. Prior research (Anzia and Moe 2015) finds evidence supporting such concerns. Consistent with incentives to minimize such perceptions, our findings suggest that state pension plans with stronger public unions select higher discount rates to improve reported funding levels. While riskier asset allocations are used to support the higher discount rates (which equal the expected return on the plan assets), most of the higher rates appear opportunistic. In addition, consistent with a desire to avoid drawing attention to persistent plan underfunding, our evidence indicates that stronger union plans are less likely to select longer amortization periods to recognize pension deficits when underfunding is larger. We do not, however, find evidence for asset smoothing periods being used to delay the recognition of investment losses on plan assets. Together, our findings suggest that stronger union plans take steps to make their pension obligations look less burdensome to the public.

This study examines whether having accounting experts on audit committees can mitigate the upward bias of expected rates of return (ERR) on pension plan assets documented in prior research. ERRs are found to be lower in firms with accounting expertise on their audit committees. These results are robust after controlling for variables from extant governance and pension research, and they suggest that audit committee accounting experts can help deter managers from setting higher ERRs on pension assets. While extant studies find that opportunistic setting of pension assumptions can be controlled through regulation, this paper provides new evidence on the influence of audit committee accounting experts on critical pension estimates. This newfound governance effect is different from and incremental to the regulation effect previously documented in the pension accounting literature.

This study examines whether having accounting experts on audit committees can mitigate the upward bias of expected rates of return (ERR) on pension plan assets documented in prior research. ERRs are found to be lower in firms with accounting expertise on their audit committees. These results are robust after controlling for variables from extant governance and pension research, and they suggest that audit committee accounting experts can help deter managers from setting higher ERRs on pension assets. While extant studies find that opportunistic setting of pension assumptions can be controlled through regulation, this paper provides new evidence on the influence of audit committee accounting experts on critical pension estimates. This newfound governance effect is different from and incremental to the regulation effect previously documented in the pension accounting literature.

While prior literature documents that Big 4 auditors provide higher quality audits, recent evidence suggests that these differences are due to client characteristics (Lawrence, Minutti-Meza, & Zang, 2011). Evidence on the audit quality of mid-tier auditors is mixed (Boone, Khurana, & Raman, 2010; Cassell, Giroux, Myers, & Omer, 2013). This study investigates the audit quality of small auditor firms (i.e., those with 100 or fewer). Specifically, we examine the relationship between earnings manipulations and the use of small audit firms, controlling for client characteristics using propensity score matching. We find that small audit firms are less able to constrain managers' opportunistic use of discretionary accruals. However we find no evidence that small audit firms are associated with real activity manipulation. By investigating a specific group of audit firms that are the smallest in the audit market, this study extends our understanding of the role of audit firm size in audit quality.

Asymmetric verification takes into account both the type of news (i.e., good versus bad news) and the level of uncertainty regarding that news. Good news should be more certain (i.e. more verifiable) before it is reflected in earnings than bad news. To test this principle, we use data from Thomson Reuters News Analytics to construct a measure of uncertainty based on news articles on public firms. These articles are measured at the firm level and are assigned positive, negative, and neutral scores that sum to a total of one. If the positive score is largest, then the article is coded as good news (bad news articles are coded similarly). We then create a dispersion measure for each article where higher numbers represent more polarized news. Overall, we find that good news is more highly associated with earnings when uncertainty is low consistent with asymmetric verification. In contrast, we find no such association between bad news and uncertainty (as we would expect).

We examine the pattern of reported quarterly net periodic pension costs. Quarterly pension costs are one of the largest single expense items for firms with pension plans (around 15% of income before extraordinary items in our sample). Under ASC 270, net pension costs should be recognized as incurred, or as the benefit provided by the expense is realized. We find that over the period of 2004–2010, there is significant variation in the amount of quarterly pension cost firms report. In addition, we find that income-increasing changes in pension costs are significantly associated with meeting or beating analysts' forecasts in a given quarter. We also show that income-decreasing changes to net periodic pension costs that would cause a firm to miss its earnings forecast are extremely rare. Finally, we find evidence that income-increasing and income-decreasing changes in quarterly pension costs are “settled up” in the fourth quarter (e.g., they are reversed).

Using 7245 firm-year observations from Korean listed companies over 2000–2004, we find that firms located in Seoul (the capital city of Korea) or its surrounding metropolitan area (i.e. urban areas) are more likely to manage earnings than firms located in other areas (i.e. rural areas). Discretionary accruals are larger for urban firms than rural firms after controlling for variables that affect the level of accruals. Our findings suggest that due to greater attention from large numbers of investors and other market participants, urban firms face greater pressure to manipulate earnings to satisfy market expectations. However, we fail to find evidence of an association between firm location and increased earnings management for firms audited by Big 4 auditors or firms followed by analysts, which are likely to be more closely monitored by investors and other market participants. These findings are robust in various sensitivity analyses.

We investigate whether quarterly annual effective tax rate (ETR) estimates are systematically biased in comparison to year-end actual ETRs. We find that estimated annual ETRs in the first, second, and third quarters are systematically higher than year-end ETRs. We then investigate whether firms’ overstatement of quarterly ETRs creates slack that is used for earnings management. We find that quarterly ETR increases are more likely to be reversed when firms would have missed their analysts’ earnings forecast absent the reversal. Finally, we show that in the years subsequent to the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) the changes in the ETR are more highly associated with earnings management. These results documenting patterns of annual ETR estimates and revisions contribute to research about how earnings management is accomplished.

It is well known that the objectives of financial accounting and tax accounting sometimes conflict, resulting in book-tax differences (BTDs). In this study we test for associations between measures of BTDs and measures of market participants' uncertainty regarding the information conveyed in financial reports. The measures of market participant uncertainty are: (1) share turnover, (2) analyst forecast dispersion, and (3) stock return variance. We find positive associations between levels and variability of total BTDs and the three measures. After disaggregating BTDs into their permanent and temporary components, we find that both are positively associated with market uncertainty, although the permanent component of BTDs is generally more strongly and consistently associated with measures of uncertainty than is the temporary component. We interpret these results, in part, as indicative of the possible effect of uncertainty contained in BTDs, especially permanent BTDs, on the precision of the information conveyed in the financial statements.

This study provides evidence that, when “hard” freezing their defined benefit pension plans, employers select downward biased accounting assumptions to exaggerate the economic burden of their benefit plans. Downward biased expected rates of return and discount rates allow managers to increase reported pension expenses and, for discount rates, allow managers to increase reported pension liabilities. We find that prior to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, both rates are downward biased when firms freeze their plans, whereas after SOX the bias is lower. This finding is consistent with managers opportunistically biasing pension estimates to obtain labor concessions during periods of reduced regulatory scrutiny.

We provide evidence that CEO cash compensation is relatively less sensitive to pension expense than pension income, suggesting that compensation committees shield CEO cash compensation from pension expense amounts. We also provide evidence that managers use relatively higher expected rate of return estimates when reporting pension income, suggesting that managers select income-increasing accounting estimates in response to compensation committees’ greater emphasis on pension income in CEO cash compensation determinations. Pension cost amounts represent a unique setting to examine such behavior as their effect on CEO cash compensation can be detrimental or beneficial, but arise from the same underlying economic activity.

We investigate whether the characteristics of chief financial officers (CFOs) are associated with accounting errors (using accounting restatements as a proxy). We investigate several metrics of financial literacy similar to those suggested for members of audit committees by the NYSE-NASD Blue Ribbon Committee. These metrics include years of work as a CFO, experience at another company, advanced degrees (like M.B.A.s), and professional certification (like a CPA). We use a logit model to test whether the likelihood of an earnings restatement is related to the above metrics of financial literacy (measured at the date of the original accounting error). Restating and non-restating companies during the period 1997–2002 were matched on year, industry, and company size. Overall, our results are consistent with restatements being negatively associated with the CFO's financial expertise. Specifically, we find that companies whose CFOs have more work experience as CFOs, M.B.A.s, and/or CPAs are significantly less likely to restate their earnings.

We investigate whether quarterly effective tax rate estimates are systematically biased in comparison to year-end actual tax rates. We further explore whether this bias is associated with (1) subsequent revisions that allow managers to meet earnings estimates and (2) lower analysts' forecasts that make earnings targets easier for manage rs to achieve. We find that first, second and third quarter effective tax rates are systematically higher than year-end, consistent with managers building slack into their estimates. On average, these rates decline monotonically each quarter. In spite of this apparent slack, we find that analysts incorporate the bias in quarterly effective tax rate into their forecasts. We also find that the apparent slack tends to be reversed when the firm would have missed its earnings forecast absent the reversal. Our findings that effective tax rate estimates are incorporated in analysts' forecasts, and that patterns of estimates and revisions are consistent with building slack, guiding analysts' forecasts lower and managing earnings, contribute to research about how earnings management is accomplished.