Financial Accounting & Auditing

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently issued a call for comment on a proposal to accept financial statements prepared in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) without reconciliation to U.S. GAAP. Accounting researchers have attempted to assess the quality of IFRS using different methods and criteria. While we are skeptical of drawing direct conclusions about the SEC’s proposal based on this research, there is adequate evidence that both IFRS and U.S. GAAP provide useful information to investors and other users of financial statements.

We examine the association between CEO reputation (proxied by the extent of press coverage) and the quality of the firm's earnings (proxied by two accruals-based measures). We test three explanations for an association between these constructs: the efficient contracting hypothesis suggests that reputed CEOs are associated with good earnings quality, while the rent extraction and matching explanations argue that reputed CEOs are associated with poor earnings quality.

The pressure to meet/beat analysts' expectations is often blamed for the recent onslaught of accounting scandals. We investigate changes in the meeting/beating phenomenon post-scandals and find that the stock market premium to meeting or just beating analyst estimates has disappeared while the premium to beating by a larger margin has diminished. In the post-scandals period, managers tend to meet or just beat analysts' forecasts less often. Further, managers rely less on income-increasing discretionary accruals and more on earnings guidance.

The Financial Accounting Standards Committee of the American Accounting Association (the Committee) is charged with responding to requests for comment from standard setters on issues related to financial reporting. The Committee is pleased to respond to the Financial Accounting and Standards Board (FASB) Exposure Draft, "The Fair Value Option for Financial Assets and Financial Liabilities, Including an Amendment of FASB Statement No. 115," issued in January 2006.

This paper addresses the issues that confront the FASB and IASB in developing a new conceptual framework document. First, we suggest characteristics that a conceptual framework ought to exhibit. Most of these suggestions are based on our critique of the existing framework and the FASB-IASB work in progress. Second, we present a model framework that exhibits these characteristics. We emphasize up front that this framework is quite explicit. It goes to the heart of what a framework document should do: it places specific restrictions on what constitutes admissible accounting standards.

The Financial Accounting Standards Committee of the American Accounting Association (the Committee) is charged with responding to requests for comment from standard setters on issues related to financial reporting. This paper summarizes the Committee's response to the Financial Accounting Standards Board's Exposure Draft, "Employers' Accounting for Defined Benefit Pension and Other Post-retirement Plans: An Amendment of FASB Statements No. 87, 88, 106, and 132(R)."

This paper lays out a decomposition of book-to-price (B/P) that derives from the accounting for book value and that articulates precisely how B/P "absorbs" leverage. The B/P ratio can be decomposed into an enterprise book-to-price (that pertains to operations and potentially reflects operating risk) and a leverage component (that reflects financing risk).

Contrary to the common perception that operating cash flows are better than accounting earnings at explaining equity valuations, recent studies suggest that valuations derived from industry multiples based on reported earnings are closer to traded prices than those based on reported operating cash flows.

This study investigates the determinants of the expected stock-price volatility assumption that firms use in estimating ESO values and thus option expense. We find that, consistent with the guidance of FAS 123, firms use both historical and implied volatility in deriving the expected volatility parameter. We also find, however, that the importance of each of the two variables in explaining disclosed volatility relates inversely to their values, which results in a reduction in expected volatility and thus option value.