ABSTRACT We develop a general norm-dependent utility function with disutility for actions that are inferior or superior to a norm. We test its validity by assessing the moderating role of norm sensitivity in explaining responses to peer influences in a budget reporting experiment. Managers become less honest after seeing a less honest peer (the rotten apple effect) and more honest after seeing a more honest peer (the sterling example effect). We measure the sensitivity to social norms by the Maintaining Norms Schema score generated from the responses to the Defining Issue Test-2 moral reasoning questionnaire. We find that (1) the sterling example effect is significantly increased in an individual’s sensitivity to social norms and (2) the rotten apple effect does not vary significantly with an individual’s sensitivity to social norms. Our evidence supports inclusion of a disutility component for actions that are inferior to the norm in representations of personal preferences. JEL Classifications: C72, D03; J44; M41; M55.

SEC-mandated, machine-readable structured filings are an alternative source to Compustat for companies' accounting data. Discrepancies between as-filed and Compustat data, potentially a result of Compustat's standardizations, are more pronounced for firms with complex financial reporting. We show that these data discrepancies affect inferences in four research settings: (i) properties of accrual accounting, including accruals-cash flow relationships and abnormal accruals; (ii) real earnings management; (iii) the existence and magnitude of six of 21 accounting-based anomalies examined, including the accruals anomaly; and (iv) disclosure quality assessments based on the hierarchical structure of financial statement items. FactSet data also exhibit significant and often larger discrepancies from as-filed data. Our findings demonstrate the importance of these data discrepancies for the interpretation of empirical tests.

This document provides supplementary materials for the paper titled “Lost in Standardization: Effects of Financial Statement Database Discrepancies on Inference”

Options, restricted stock, bonuses tied to total shareholder return, and similar equity-based compensation contracts stipulate payments that depend on stock price. Any such contract is a function of shareholder value net of the compensation payment, because stock price (1) is proportional to this net value or “net outcome” and (2) anticipates compensation-related payments and dilution. The net outcome, in turn, is reduced by the payment and so depends on the contract. Standard moral hazard analyses, wherein contractual payments are based on the gross outcome before any payment to the agent, overlook this dependency. We characterize the optimal net-outcome contract, describe its shape and pay-for-performance sensitivity, contrast it with the optimal gross-outcome contract, and discuss implications for equity-based compensation arrangements.

We propose a simple framework for understanding accounting-based stock return regularities. A firm's accounting reports provide noisy information about hidden economic states that evolve according to a Markov process. In response to the accounting reports, a representative Bayesian investor forms beliefs about the underlying state and hence the value of the firm. For a population of such firms, the model provides predictions consistent with two sets of well-documented regularities: (i) the market reaction to an earnings announcement that ends a string of consecutive earnings increases and (ii) the return predictabilities based on accruals and book-tax differences. The model also yields novel cross-sectional predictions about the distinct roles of economic persistence and earnings informativeness. We confirm these predictions through empirical tests.

SEC-mandated, machine-readable structured filings, or “as-filed data,” are an alternative source to Compustat for companies’ accounting data. Discrepancies between as-filed and Compustat data, potentially a result of Compustat’s standardizations, affect inferences about the existence and magnitude of the accruals anomaly: accruals calculated from as-filed data do predict returns and accruals calculated from Compustat data do not. Trades of hedge funds that download structured filings correlate with the as-filed accruals signal and, especially, the discrepancy between as-filed and Compustat accruals signals. Inferences about four other accounting-based anomalies are similarly affected by discrepancies between data sources.

We propose and validate a new measure of earnings quality based on a hidden Markov model. This measure, termed earnings fidelity, captures how faithful earnings signals are in revealing the true economic state of the firm. We estimate the measure using a Markov chain Monte Carlo procedure in a Bayesian hierarchical framework that accommodates cross-sectional heterogeneity. Earnings fidelity is positively associated with the forward earnings response coefficient. It significantly outperforms existing measures of quality in predicting two external indicators of low-quality accounting: restatements and Securities and Exchange Commission comment letters.

The authors report the results of laboratory experiments in which subjects are offered contracts structured similar to equity compensation packages and result in subjects receiving cash payments that are a function of their effort and random factors. The authors compare the outcomes from alternative contractual forms to theoretical benchmarks and report the efficiency of the contracts to provide evidence on whether options or stocks that have same economic cost to the employer yield the same or different effort levels from the managers. Both contracts elicit lower levels of effort than would be chosen by an expected-payoff-maximizing decision maker. Effort choices under the option contract did not differ significantly from effort choices under the stock contract except for male subjects. The option contract elicits a higher effort level for these subjects and condition than the stock contract. Effort choices reflect loss aversion and regret based on past stock price realizations.

Vertical pay dispersion is the difference in pay across different hierarchical levels within an organization (Milkovich and Newman 1996). While vertical pay dispersion may be useful in attracting, retaining and motivating highly skilled employees (Lazear and Rosen 1981; Lazear 1995; Prendergast 1999), our study investigates a potential disadvantage; specifically, the negative impact of perceived unfairness of vertical pay dispersion on employees’ budgeting decisions. We predict and find that high vertical pay dispersion motivates subordinates to misreport costs to a greater extent than low vertical pay dispersion. Furthermore, we predict and find that superiors, on average, exercise more lenient cost controls when vertical pay dispersion is high rather than low. Supplemental analysis indicates superiors are more lenient on average due to their aversion to inequity caused by vertical pay dispersion. Our results suggest that high vertical pay dispersion can compromise the overall corporate budgeting environment, where higher levels of misreporting by subordinates goes unchecked by superiors.

During the past few decades, accounting and finance researchers have been interested in analysts’ earnings forecast accuracy and stock recommendation profitability. This survey examines articles that explore this issue to determine researchers’ methods of studying of this process. This survey found that few researchers study analysts’ forecast process directly. Instead, many use the indirect approach of statistical analysis. This research suggests the need to approach analysts about their forecast process directly, for example, by interview.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) performs inspections of accounting firms with fewer than 100 clients listed on an American stock exchange on a three-year cycle. The inspections of the audit work of these firms (hereafter, small public practice firms) are the focus of this study. Theory models the interactions between an inspected entity and an inspector either as static, with independent interactions, or dynamic, with continuous learning among parties throughout multiple inspection cycles. Because three years pass between inspections, prior inspection results may be irrelevant to the current inspection. If the inspectors rely on recent information supplied by the small public practice firm to plan and execute the current inspection, a static view might characterize the relationship between the PCAOB and the firm. On the other hand, a dynamic relationship encourages past PCAOB inspections to influence current interactions with the firm. I posit that a firm that received a clean prior inspection outcome, i.e., no engagement deficiencies or quality control issues, is less likely to have an increase in the number of audit clients inspected during the current inspection than firms that received other prior inspection outcomes. Controlling for the current client portfolio characteristics, I find that an average firm with a prior clean report has a 6% decrease in the probability of an increase in the number of client files inspected with the current inspection as compared to firms with different prior inspection outcomes. This finding provides evidence consistent with a dynamic relationship among the PCAOB and the firms. For practitioners, these results show that the PCAOB conditions subsequent inspections on past inspection results.

Accounting research, whether founded in an economics or sociological paradigm, has generally treated regulation as an exogenous part of the environment that shapes the behavior of those who operate within it. Recently, joining those who have advanced the regulator capture hypothesis, the exogenous presumption of the regulatory framework has been challenged by institutional theorists within the sociology literature, and it has been reasoned that those regulated seek to influence the regulations applied to them to gain advantage. In effect, the actions of those regulated "endogenize" the regulations that gird them. Employing this emerging strand of institutional theory research, we probe efforts to "endogenize" the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) regulation of insider trading. More specifically, applying both latent and manifest content analyses, we examine archival material relating to the development of insider trading regulations, focusing in particular on the social negotiation of the SEC's Rule 10b5-1, which prohibits company officers from trading in their company's stock while in "knowing possession" of material, non-public information. Our results suggest that those regulated by 10b5-1 effectively influenced this regulation (viz., by way of successfully advocating for an affirmative defense provided for so-called "planned trades"). Our analysis suggests that endogenization is an on-going, recursive process marked by moves and counter-moves among contending factions. Implications are explored.

We propose that idiosyncratic benefits from adhering to social norms explain the heterogeneity in honesty documented in many situations where misrepresentation yields a financial benefit. Further, information about the honesty of one's peers modifies the descriptive norm and hence, one's own honesty. We test these hypotheses in a reporting experiment with two managers in which one manager observes the reports of a peer. Managers’ honesty decreases when peers are less honest and increases when peers are more honest. The importance of the maintaining norms schema — assessed by the DIT-2 — explains these adjustments and, moreover, explains variation in reporting honesty in vacuo.

Consistent with allegations that lofty stock-based compensation levels in the 1990s led managers to boost the stock price by manipulating earnings before selling stock, we find that: managers tended to inflate earnings before selling stock; during the market bubble’s last years, firms managing earnings the most experienced returns 21% higher than firms managing earnings the least; and stocks of firms where insiders sold the most stock rose 59% higher than stocks where insiders sold the least. Furthermore, stock corrections after the bubble burst are strongly negatively associated with estimated levels of earnings management and insider selling during the bubble.

We provide large sample evidence that past price extremes influence investors' trading decisions. Volume is strikingly higher, in both economic and statistical terms, when the stock price crosses either the upper or lower limit of its past trading range. This increase in volume is more pronounced the longer the time since the stock price last achieved the price extreme, the smaller the firm, the higher the individual investor interest in the stock, and the greater the ambiguity regarding valuation. These results are robust across model specifications and controls for past returns and news arrival. Volume spikes when price crosses either the upper or lower limit of the past trading range, then gradually subsides. After either event, returns are reliably positive and, among small investors, trades classified as buyer-initiated are elevated. Overall, results are more consistent with bounded rationality than with other candidate explanations.