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Compensation Shifting from Salary to Dividends
Abstract
This paper examines whether owner-managers of small firms use their compensation strategically to change reported earnings. We identify an institutional setting, Denmark, in which the owner-manager has the discretion to shift compensation from salary to dividends and hence increase reported earnings at almost no direct cost due to approximate tax neutrality between the two income streams. Three findings emerge. First, owner-managers are twice as likely to decrease their salary when doing so can result in meeting or beating the zero earnings benchmark. Second, those decreasing their salaries to beat the benchmark are 45% more likely to increase dividends simultaneously than those who can beat the benchmark but do not. This indicates that reporting incentives shape compensation shifting. Third, owner-managed firms enjoy about 6% (EUR 1070) lower interest rates (interest expenses), than firms reporting losses, when they beat the benchmark by simultaneously decreasing salaries and increasing dividends. Our results highlight that owner-managers can manage reported earnings by altering their own compensation, which has economic consequences for the firm. This has implications for users of owner-managed firms’ financial reports because reported earnings would seem a poor contracting signal for these firms.
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In 2014, all larger Swedish private firms were required, at short notice, to adopt a new reporting standard (K3) based on IFRS for SMEs (2009 version). Using this shock to the reporting environment, we study the effects of the new reporting standard on groups’ financial reporting properties and cost of debt financing. We find that, following the introduction of K3, private groups exhibit reporting changes consistent with improved accounting quality; their financial statement comparability increases; and their cost of debt declines. Our results suggest that the cost-of-debt decline is related to changes in accounting numbers that are imputed to lending models. Our findings add to the literature on factors shaping private firms’ financial reporting and inform the ongoing discussion on accounting regulation for private firms.
We examine whether criminal records of CEOs and rank-and-file employees are associated with firms’ likelihood of bankruptcy, and whether lenders adjust their required cost of debt accordingly. We use a nationwide sample of private firms and criminal registers covering all firm employees. We find that the likelihood of bankruptcy is positively associated with the CEO’s criminal record and the proportion of employees with criminal records. We find some, though less robust, evidence that lenders price a firm’s loan higher when the firm’s CEO has a criminal record and when more of the employees have criminal records. The results suggest that the characteristics of firm employees represent a risk that, to some extent, is priced by lenders.
This study assesses whether the accrual-generating process is adequately described by a linear model with respect to a range of underlying determinants examined by prior literature. We document substantial departures from linearity across the distributions of accrual determinants, including measures of size, performance, and growth. To incorporate non-linear relations, we employ a recently developed multivariate matching approach (entropy balancing) to adjust for determinants in place of relying on a linear model. Entropy balancing identifies weights for the control sample to equalize the distribution of determinants across treatment and control samples. In simulations drawing random samples from deciles where a linear model displays poor fit, we find that entropy balancing significantly improves accrual model specification by reducing coefficient bias relative to linear and propensity-score matched models. Consistent with entropy balancing retaining sufficient power, we find that its estimates detect seeded accrual manipulations and explain variation in accruals around equity issuances.
We explore whether audit partners’ attitude towards risk, as measured by their personal criminal convictions, are reflected in the composition of their client portfolios. Analyzing a unique dataset of Swedish audit partners’ criminal convictions, we find that the clients of audit partners with criminal convictions are characterized by greater financial, governance, and reporting risk than those of audit partners without criminal convictions. Also, clients of audit partners with criminal convictions pay larger audit fees, on average, than those of auditors without criminal convictions.
This paper assesses different econometric approaches to working with count-based outcome variables and other outcomes with similar distributions, which are increasingly common in corporate finance applications. We demonstrate that the common practice of estimating linear regressions of the log of 1 plus the outcome produces estimates with no natural interpretation that can have the wrong sign in expectation. In contrast, a simple fixed-effects Poisson model produces consistent and reasonably efficient estimates under more general conditions than commonly assumed. We also show through replication of existing papers that economic conclusions can be highly sensitive to the regression model employed.
Macro-finance analyses commonly link firms’ borrowing constraints to the liquidation value of physical assets. For U.S. nonfinancial firms, we show that 20% of debt by value is based on such assets (asset-based lending in creditor parlance), whereas 80% is based predominantly on cash flows from firms’ operations (cash flow–based lending). A standard borrowing constraint restricts total debt as a function of cash flows measured using operating earnings (earnings-based borrowing constraints). These features shape firm outcomes on the margin: first, cash flows in the form of operating earnings can directly relax borrowing constraints; second, firms are less vulnerable to collateral damage from asset price declines, and fire sale amplification may be mitigated. Taken together, our findings point to new venues for modeling firms’ borrowing constraints in macro-finance studies.
Information, which can arrive in multiple forms, is a fundamental component of all financial transactions and markets. We define hard and soft information and describe the relative advantages of each. Hard information is quantitative, is easy to store, and can be transmitted in impersonal ways. Its information content is independent of its collection. As technology changes, the way we collect, process, and communicate information, it changes the structure of markets, the design of financial intermediaries, and the incentives to use or misuse information. We survey the literature to understand how information type influences the continued evolution of financial markets and institutions.
Received October 25, 2016; editorial decision September 6, 2018 by Editor Efraim Benmelech.
This study uses a comprehensive panel of tax returns to examine the financial reporting choices of medium‐to‐large private U.S. firms, a setting which controls over $9 trillion in capital, vastly outnumbers public U.S. firms across all industries, yet has no financial reporting mandates. We find that nearly two‐thirds of these firms do not produce audited GAAP financial statements. Guided by an agency theory framework, we find that size, ownership dispersion, external debt, and trade credit are positively associated with the choice to produce audited GAAP financial statements, while asset tangibility, age, and internal debt are generally negatively related to this choice. Our findings reveal that (1) equity capital and trade credit exhibit significant explanatory power, suggesting that the primary focus in the literature on debt is too narrow; (2) firm youth, growth, and R&D are positively associated with audited GAAP reporting, reflecting important monitoring roles of financial reporting; and (3) many firms violate standard explanations for financial reporting choices and substantial unexplained heterogeneity in financial reporting remains. We conclude by identifying opportunities for future research.
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Using variation in firms’ exposure to their CEOs resulting from hospitalization, we estimate the effect of CEOs on firm policies, holding firm‐CEO matches constant. We document three main findings. First, CEOs have a significant effect on profitability and investment. Second, CEO effects are larger for younger CEOs, in growing and family‐controlled firms, and in human‐capital‐intensive industries. Third, CEOs are unique: the hospitalization of other senior executives does not have similar effects on performance. Overall, our findings demonstrate that CEOs are a key driver of firm performance, which suggests that CEO contingency plans are valuable. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved
Applied econometricians frequently apply the inverse hyperbolic sine (or arcsinh) transformation to a variable because it approximates the natural logarithm of that variable and allows retaining zero‐valued observations. We provide derivations of elasticities in common applications of the inverse hyperbolic sine transformation and show empirically that the difference in elasticities driven by ad hoc transformations can be substantial. We conclude by offering practical guidance for applied researchers.
We examine the effects of financial reporting regulation on firms’ banking. Exploiting discontinuous public disclosure and auditing requirements assigned to otherwise similar small and medium-sized private firms, we document that financial reporting regulation reduces firms’ reliance on concentrated and local bank relationships and increases banks’ reliance on firms’ financial reporting, consistent with a shift in firms’ banking from relationship toward transactional approaches. Our evidence suggests that financial reporting regulation substitutes for banks’ information production role by burdening firms with the disclosure and auditing of their financial statements, consistent with institutional complementarities between reporting and banking systems.
Received October 21, 2016; editorial decision September 15, 2017 by Editor Philip Strahan. Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University PressWeb site next to the link to the final published paper online.
We survey commercial bank lenders to better understand how they evaluate and react to variation in financial statement quality and how they view recent changes in accounting standards. A unique aspect of this study is that our respondents focus on medium‐size loans to private companies. In fact, more than 90 percent of the survey respondents primarily make credit decisions on loans between $250 thousand and $50 million. This is in contrast to prior archival research, which focuses primarily on very large loans to public firms or very small loans to private firms. We find that lenders in our sample distinguish among financial statements in terms of quality, including conservatism, primarily on the basis of accrual patterns and restatements. While this general result holds throughout our sample, financial statement quality is substantially more important for lenders making larger loans (over $10 million) as compared to very small loans (under $1 million). In addition, bank lenders are much more likely to respond to low‐quality reporting with collateral and guarantee requirements than with an increase in the interest rate charged. This finding is consistent for lenders making both larger and smaller loans. Finally, despite concerns in the academic literature, bank lenders in our sample actually hold a neutral‐to‐positive view of recent changes in accounting standards. In addition, most do not support current efforts to exempt private companies from some accounting standards.
Private firms face differing financial disclosure and auditing regulations around the world. In the US and Canada, for example, private firms are generally neither required to disclose their financial results nor have their financial statements audited. By contrast, many firms with limited liability in most other countries are required to file at least some financial information publicly and are also required to have their financial statements audited. This paper discusses and analyzes the reasons for differential financial reporting regulation of private firms. We first discuss various definitions of a private firm. Next, we examine theoretical arguments for regulating the financial reporting of these firms, particularly related to public disclosure and auditing. We then provide new survey-based evidence of firms’ and standard setters’ views of regulation. We conclude by identifying future research opportunities.
en The accounting literature includes numerous examples of discontinuities at prominent benchmarks that are widely interpreted as evidence that earnings are managed to meet those benchmarks. However, there are a few examples where discontinuities do not exist, which are sometimes interpreted as inconsistent with earnings management. Alternative explanations for discontinuities have also been suggested. This paper reviews, evaluates, and integrates the available evidence and concludes that the theory that earnings are managed to meet benchmarks provides the simplest and most complete explanation for the body of discontinuity‐related evidence.
Qu'avons‐nous appris au sujet de la gestion du résultat? Intégration des éléments probants relatifs aux discontinuités
fr La littérature comptable regorge d'exemples de discontinuités à des valeurs de référence essentielles largement interprétés comme attestant la gestion du résultat de manière en vue de l'atteinte de ces valeurs. Il existe cependant quelques exemples de cas dans lesquels les discontinuités sont inexistantes, situation que l'on juge parfois incompatible avec la gestion du résultat. D'autres explications des discontinuités ont aussi été suggérées. Les auteurs étudient, évaluent et compilent les éléments probants disponibles et concluent que la théorie selon laquelle le résultat est géré de manière à ce que les valeurs de référence soient atteintes fournit l'explication la plus simple et la plus complète, en ce qui a trait à l'ensemble des éléments probants liés aux discontinuités.
Using a sample of firms that disclose the realizations of earnings used for determining covenant compliance in loan contracts, we provide direct evidence on the informational properties of earnings used in the performance covenants included in debt contracts. We find that the earnings measure used in performance covenants does not exhibit asymmetric loss timeliness and has significantly greater cash flow predictive ability than GAAP measures of earnings. We suggest that these results reflect the idea that contracting parties design accounting rules for performance covenants to enhance their efficacy as “tripwires”. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved
We examine the financial reporting practices of small privately held businesses that are not subject to SEC regulation. Specifically, we determine the factors associated with the production and use of financial statements for firms that have discretion in the preparation of financial statements and do not face the demands of public equity markets. In addition, for firms that prepare financial statements, we determine the factors associated with the sophistication of the financial statements in terms of whether the financials are compiled, reviewed, and/or audited by a professional accountant and whether the firm produces accrual-based financial statements. Finally, we examine the potential benefits afforded firms producing financial statements, having audited financial statements, and having accrual-based financial statements. We find that firms with audited financial statements benefit in the form of greater access to credit and that firms with accrual-based financial statements benefit in the form of a lower cost of credit.
We study the effects of physical distance on the acquisition and use of private information in informationally opaque credit
markets. Using a unique data set of all loan applications by small firms to a large bank, we show that borrower proximity
facilitates the collection of soft information, leading to a trade-off in the availability and pricing of credit, which is
more readily accessible to nearby firms albeit at higher interest rates ceteris paribus. Analyzing loan rates and firms’ decision to switch lenders provides further evidence for banks’ strategic use of private
information. However, distance erodes our lender’s ability to collect proprietary intelligence and to carve out local captive
markets, suggesting that the requisite soft information is primarily local.
This study explores a large and detailed dataset of financial statements of Belgian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) over the 1997-2010 period. Using accruals quality as a proxy for the quality of SMEs’ financial reports, we find that the quality of SMEs’ financial statements is negatively related to those companies’ effective interest cost. This result is also highly economically significant. The findings in this paper are consistent with the idea that earnings are important for creditors in predicting SMEs’ reimbursement capacity (i.e., future cash flows) and that less estimation error in accruals enhances earnings’ ability to predict future cash flows. We deliver evidence of an important economic benefit of financial reporting for SMEs, to wit, the potential to reduce information asymmetry between SMEs and their creditors through higher-quality financial reporting.
A growing body of literature documents how different parties benefit from structured data across the information supply chain. The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of voluntary adoption of the eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) on price and non-price terms of loan contracting. Using a sample of Belgian private firms, the analyses provide evidence that banks charge lower interest rate spreads to voluntary adopters as compared to non-adopters. The results also show that loan sizes are larger in comparison for voluntary adopters of XBRL. Further, the effect of XBRL adoption is stronger for opaque firms. The results are robust to using different estimation approaches as well as additional tests. The findings are in line with the view that XBRL data filings reduce information processing costs, and contribute to our understanding of the impact of structured data on loan contracting – an implication that may be of interest to regulators and other parties interested in the benefits of structured data across the information supply chain.
This study investigates the role of public debt financing in shaping accounting conservatism in privately held companies. We focus on the change in conservatism of private firms following initial issuance of public debt and examine the effects of agency conflicts between bondholders and shareholders on the change in conservatism. Regression analyses on a large sample of public bond issues by Korean private firms reveal the following: First, private firms with public debt exhibit a higher degree of conservatism than those with exclusively private debt. The incremental effect of public debt on the level of conservatism is virtually equivalent in magnitude to that of public equity. Second, and more importantly, private firms that issue public debt for the first time show a significant increase in conservatism, whereas corresponding public firms do not. Third, private firms with high agency costs of public debt (characterized by high information asymmetry and high credit risk) undergo a greater increase in conservatism following their initial bond issues than those with low agency costs. Further analysis shows that private firms sustain increased levels of conservatism even beyond the time period of average maturity of initial bonds and that bond investors reward this long-term commitment to conservative accounting by gradually reducing interest rates for seasoned bond issuers. The findings of this study shed light on how information demand arising from public debt issuance, especially by private firms with high ex ante agency costs, engenders conservative financial reporting in emerging markets.
We review the academic literature on the use of financial reporting information by capital providers. We classify our findings by investor type and by information objective. While most capital providers use accounting information, our survey indicates that they do so in a variety of ways with financial reporting information competing with other sources of information. We also find that information intermediaries are influential in both credit and equity markets, making the identification of a typical target ‘user’ inherently difficult. Our main findings question the underlying objective of the Conceptual Framework to guide the development of standards for general-purpose financial statements to provide a typical knowledgeable investor with a true and fair view about the reporting entity. Finally, we identify gaps in the literature and suggest areas where future research can help inform important academic and policy debates.
This paper analyzes whether a dividend tax cut for owner–managers of closely held corporations encourages income shifting, income generation, or both. We use rich Swedish administrative micro data from 2000 to 2011 comprising detailed firm- and individual-level information. We find robust evidence of extensive income shifting across tax bases in response to the 2006 Swedish dividend tax cut. Owner–managers of closely held corporations reclassify earned income as dividend income but do not increase total income. The response is more pronounced for owner–managers with tax incentives and with easier access to income shifting through a high ownership share.
This paper examines the association between patterns of increasing earnings and incremental firm value as reflected by earnings multiples, holding level of income constant. As predicted, we find firms exhibiting patterns of increasing earnings have larger earnings multiples than other firms and the incremental earnings multiple is reduced significantly when an increasing earnings pattern is broken. The findings are robust to controlling for growth, risk, earnings variability, measurement error in permanent earnings, persistence, dividend yield, and industry membership, using proxies identified in previous research. An extension of the Lang [1991] model indicates increasing earnings patterns can affect firm valuation by permitting market participants to update their prior beliefs about the firm. We conclude earnings patterns are a proxy for value-relevant firm characteristics such as growth that are not reflected fully in proxies identified in prior research.
The paper examines syndicated loan market to study whether and how borrowers’ meeting or beating analysts’ expectations (MBE) have more favorable debt contractual terms. Using a sample of listed loan firms in Dealscan database during 1998-2009, we find that, as predicted, firms missing analysts’ earnings forecasts have higher loan spreads, relative to those meeting analysts’ expectations. In addition to price loan term (e.g., interest spread), we further find that missing earnings expectations has an adverse effect on non-price loan terms. Specifically, we find that when firm misses its earnings expectations, lenders are more likely to require a borrower to provide collateral to compensate for missing earnings expectations; lenders also impose more covenants on firms missing expectations, regardless of financial or general covenants. However, further analyses provide no evidence that the proportion of the loan retained by syndicate lead arrangers has an association with whether a borrower meets expectations. By providing evidence that a firm’s missing expectation influence the lenders’ reliance on non-price loan terms, this paper documents the importance of financial reporting disclosure in shaping non-price debt contractual terms.
This paper examines how capital market pressures and institutional factors shape firms' incentives to report earnings that reflect economic performance. To isolate the effects of reporting incentives, we exploit the fact that, within the European Union, privately held corporations face the same accounting standards as publicly traded companies because accounting regulation is based on legal form. We focus on the level of earnings management as one dimension of accounting quality that is particularly responsive to firms' reporting incentives. We document that private firms exhibit higher levels of earnings management and that strong legal systems are associated with less earnings management in private and public firms. We also provide evidence that private and public firms respond differentially to institutional factors, such as book-tax alignment, outside investor protection and capital market structure. Moreover, legal institutions and capital market forces often appear to reinforce each other.
This paper examines the consequences of real activities manipulation. Using financial statement data, I identify firms that appear to engage in any of the following real activities manipulation (RM): reducing R&D to increase income, reducing SG&A to increase income, timing of income recognition from the disposal of long-lived assets and investments, and cutting prices to boost sales in the current period and/or overproducing to decrease COGS expense. I then examine whether RM is associated with firms just meeting two earnings benchmarks (zero and last year’s earnings). The results indicate that real activities manipulation of R&D, SG&A, and production are positively associated with firms just meeting these earnings benchmarks. Next, I examine the extent to which real activities manipulation affects subsequent performance. A negative association between just meeting earnings benchmarks by using RM and subsequent performance supports prior research suggesting managers opportunistically use earnings management to the detriment of shareholders (i.e., managerial opportunism). A positive association is consistent with managers using operational discretion to attain benefits that allow better future performance or to signal future firm value. I find that firm-years reflecting RM to just meet earnings benchmarks have higher subsequent firm performance (compared to firm-years that do not engage in RM and miss or just meet the earnings benchmarks). In this setting, using RM to influence the output of the accounting system is not opportunistic, but consistent with managers attaining benefits that allow better future performance or signaling.
Building on contract theory, we argue that financial covenants control the conflicts of interest between lenders and borrowers via two different mechanisms. Capital covenants control agency problems by aligning debt holder–shareholder interests. Performance covenants serve as trip wires that limit agency problems via the transfer of control to lenders in states where the value of their claim is at risk. Companies trade off these mechanisms. Capital covenants impose costly restrictions on the capital structure, while performance covenants require contractible accounting information to be available. Consistent with these arguments, we find that the use of performance covenants relative to capital covenants is positively associated with (1) the financial constraints of the borrower, (2) the extent to which accounting information portrays credit risk, (3) the likelihood of contract renegotiation, and (4) the presence of contractual restrictions on managerial actions. Our findings suggest that accounting-based covenants can improve contracting efficiency in two different ways.
This paper investigates whether the market rewards firms meeting current period earnings expectations, and whether any such reward reflects the implications of meeting expectations in the current period for future earnings or reflects a distinct market premium. We document that abnormal annual returns are significantly greater for firms meeting expectations, controlling for the information in the current year’s earnings. We then test whether firms meeting expectations experience higher returns simply because their expected future earnings are also higher. We find firms meeting expectations have significantly higher earnings forecasts and realized earnings than firms that do not. We find that controlling for these higher future earnings, firms meeting expectations in one or two years do not receive a greater valuation than their fundamentals would suggest. We find, however, that the market assigns a higher value to firms that meet expectations consistently, controlling for an estimate of the firm’s fundamental value.
ABSTRACTI examine how verification of financial statements influences debt pricing. I use a large proprietary database of privately held U.S. firms, an important business sector in which the information environment is opaque and financial statement audits are not mandated. I find that audited firms have a significantly lower cost of debt and that lenders place more weight on audited financial information in setting the interest rate. Further, I provide evidence of a mechanism for this increased financial statement usefulness: accruals from audited financial statements are better predictors of future cash flows. Collectively, I provide novel evidence that audited financial statements are more informative and that this significantly influences lenders’ decisions.
We investigate whether investors price accruals quality, our proxy for the information risk associated with earnings. Measuring accruals quality (AQ) as the standard deviation of residuals from regressions relating current accruals to cash flows, we find that poorer AQ is associated with larger costs of debt and equity. This result is consistent across several alternative specifications of the AQ metric. We also distinguish between accruals quality driven by economic fundamentals (innate AQ) versus management choices (discretionary AQ). Both components have significant cost of capital effects, but innate AQ effects are significantly larger than discretionary AQ effects.
This paper addresses the questions of whether private firms in eight European countries engage in earnings management, and if so, whether tax incentives affect such practices. To measure earnings management, we analyze the earnings distributions of private firms and compare these distributions with those of public firms in the same countries. The empirical evidence suggests that in absence of capital market pressures, firms still have incentives to manage earnings, as we find that private firms avoid reporting small losses. We further find that private firms in some countries where tax regulation strongly influences financial accounting do not avoid reporting small losses. We attribute this finding to tax incentives reducing firms’ benefits of (upward) earnings management. Finally, our results suggest that some types of earnings management are due to capital market pressures and are specific to public firms since we do not find evidence that private firms avoid earnings decreases.
Researchers have used various measures as indications of “earnings quality” including persistence, accruals, smoothness, timeliness, loss avoidance, investor responsiveness, and external indicators such as restatements and SEC enforcement releases. For each measure, we discuss causes of variation in the measure as well as consequences. We reach no single conclusion on what earnings quality is because “quality” is contingent on the decision context. We also point out that the “quality” of earnings is a function of the firm’s fundamental performance. The contribution of a firm’s fundamental performance to its earnings quality is suggested as one area for future work.
This paper finds that firms that meet or beat current analysts’ earnings expectations (MBE) enjoy a higher return over the quarter than firms with similar quarterly earnings forecast errors that fail to meet these expectations. Further, such a premium to MBE, although somewhat smaller, exists in the cases where MBE is likely to have been achieved through earnings or expectations management. The findings also indicate that the premium to MBE is a leading indicator of future performance. This premium and its predictive ability are only marginally affected by whether the MBE is genuine or the result of earnings or expectations management.
Earnings provide important information for investment decisions. Thus, executives--who are monitored by investors, directors, customers, and suppliers--acting in self-interest and at times for shareholders, have strong incentives to manage earnings. The authors introduce behavioral thresholds for earnings management. A model shows how thresholds induce specific types of earnings management. Empirical explorations identify earnings management to exceed each of three thresholds: report positive profits, sustain recent performance, and meet analysts' expectations. The positive profits threshold proves predominant. The future performance of firms suspect for boosting earnings just across a threshold is poorer than that of control group firms. Copyright 1999 by University of Chicago Press.
This paper provides a review of the empirical earnings management literature. In particular, it presents a review of the factors that induce and constrain earnings management through accounting decisions. The consequences of actual or assumed earnings management are also discussed. The far majority of the literature focuses on the Anglo-Saxon context. However, major differences exist between Anglo-Saxon and continental European countries. This may result in differences in the importance of various incentives of and constraints on earnings management. In particular, we argue that explicit contracts and a firm's relations with capital markets may be less important sources of earnings management in continental Europe. Implicit contracts and the political and regulatory process may however be of major importance. We question further whether a firm's ownership and internal governance structure and the quality of the external auditor can constrain the ability to manage earnings in continental European countries.
Analysis of decision making under risk has been dominated by expected utility theory, which generally accounts for people's actions. Presents a critique of expected utility theory as a descriptive model of decision making under risk, and argues that common forms of utility theory are not adequate, and proposes an alternative theory of choice under risk called prospect theory. In expected utility theory, utilities of outcomes are weighted by their probabilities. Considers results of responses to various hypothetical decision situations under risk and shows results that violate the tenets of expected utility theory. People overweight outcomes considered certain, relative to outcomes that are merely probable, a situation called the "certainty effect." This effect contributes to risk aversion in choices involving sure gains, and to risk seeking in choices involving sure losses. In choices where gains are replaced by losses, the pattern is called the "reflection effect." People discard components shared by all prospects under consideration, a tendency called the "isolation effect." Also shows that in choice situations, preferences may be altered by different representations of probabilities. Develops an alternative theory of individual decision making under risk, called prospect theory, developed for simple prospects with monetary outcomes and stated probabilities, in which value is given to gains and losses (i.e., changes in wealth or welfare) rather than to final assets, and probabilities are replaced by decision weights. The theory has two phases. The editing phase organizes and reformulates the options to simplify later evaluation and choice. The edited prospects are evaluated and the highest value prospect chosen. Discusses and models this theory, and offers directions for extending prospect theory are offered. (TNM)
This paper studies a model of “classifications manipulation” in which accounting reports consist of one of two binary classifications, preparers of accounting reports prefer one classification over the other, an accounting standard designates the official requirements that have to be met to receive the preferred classification, and preparers may engage in “classifications manipulation” in order to receive their preferred accounting classification. The possibility of classifications manipulation creates a distinction between the official classification described in the statement of the accounting standard and the de facto classification, determined by the “shadow standard” actually adopted by preparers. The paper studies the selection and evolution of accounting standards in this context. Among other things, the paper evaluates “efficient” accounting standards, it determines when there will be “standards creep,” it introduces and analyzes the notion of a Nash accounting standard, and it compares the standards set by sophisticated standard–setters to those set with less knowledge of firms’ financial reporting environments.