Firms use both calibration committees and rating distribution guidance to reduce leniency bias in subjective performance ratings. Leniency bias is the tendency to provide subordinates with higher ratings than deserved which ...

Incomplete incentive contracts in multitask environments present a significant control challenge of ensuring that employees expend sufficient effort towards all assigned tasks, particularly those that are not directly ...

In this dissertation, I examine tax incentives in corporate acquisitions. Reported tax losses or net operating losses (NOLs) under the United States (U.S.) income tax law have grown considerably in recent years. Yet, there ...

This thesis adopts a broad view of conservative financial reporting—managers can use two ways to communicate business uncertainties to outsiders, namely, conservative accounting via timely loss recognition and narrative ...

Debt contracts contain accounting-based covenants that could be affected by changes in generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). There are three types of contractual treatment of GAAP changes: excluding GAAP changes ...

This paper investigates the driver of asset growth to explain the cross-country variation of the asset growth effect. We find that institutional restrictions on equity financing constrain firms' abilities to grow assets, ...

Income shifting from high-tax to low-tax jurisdictions is considered a primary method of reducing worldwide tax burdens of multinational firms. Current losses also affect income shifting incentives. We extend prior approaches ...

In a high-complexity task environment individual productivity can be improved through exerting more effort (i.e., working harder) as well as by learning improved task strategies. I examine the productivity effects of both ...

By examining board appointments of outside directors who have previously fired a CEO, we study how directors’ willingness to take disciplinary actions is related to a firm's performance and risk-taking. Such directors ...

There has been a growing trend in accelerated share repurchases (ASRs) in the last decade. ASRs are an alternative to commonly used open market repurchases (OMRs). In an ASR, a firm commits itself to repurchasing an announced ...