Research Lab

This paper examines CEO pay in the banking industry and the effect of deregulating the market for corporate control. Using panel data on 147 banks over the 1980s, we find higher levels of pay in competitive corporate control markets, i.e., those in which interstate banking is permitted. We also find a stronger pay-performance relation in deregulated interstate banking markets. Finally, CEO turnover increases substantially after deregulation.

We improve upon existing approaches used to estimate investment models by exploiting tax reforms as "natural experiments." we find that tax policy has an economically important effect through the user cost of capital on firms' equipment investment following major tax reforms enacted in 1962, 1971, 1981, and 1986. This effect is most pronounced for firms not in tax loss positions and, thus, more likely to face statutory tax rates and investment incentives.

The purpose of this study was to determine the significance of differences between revised IASC standards (extant in 1994) and U.S. GAAP. With the assistance of Coopers & Lybrand L.L.P., the author restated the group accounts of a sample of eight companies in a variety of industries: six Continental European companies and two companies based in Australia and New Zealand. The companies' annual reports for 1992 or 1993, as supplemented by research conducted by the companies themselves, were used to construct reconciliation tables between the revised IASC standards and U.S. GAAP.

To explore if, when, and how intentionally corporate officers conceal negative organizational outcomes from shareholders, we used computer-assisted content analysis of over 1,000 president's letters contained in annual reports to shareholders. Results suggest that outside directors, large institutional investors, and accountants limit such concealment, but small institutional investors and outside directors who are shareholders prompt it. Low disclosure is associated with subsequent selling of stock by top officers and outside directors.

The objective of governments is to efficiently provide essential services and infrastructure to their jurisdictions at a competitive tax rate within the constraint of a balanced budget. In recent years, several states have found it difficult to maintain this standard. This article examines the nature of the problem in the overlapping jurisdictions of New York City and New York State. Specifically, it explains the nature of projected budget gaps that have emerged in New York, and describes how the two New Yorks' political leaders have managed their budgets in recent years.

We examine associations between accounting measures of earnings and stock returns in Japan over varying window lengths and compare them to those for the United States. Our results are consistent with the view that Japanese investors utilize less accounting information in their pricing of equities than do their U.S. counterparts. This was particularly evident in the 'boom' period of the mid to late 1980s when the fundamental values conveyed by accounting measures appear to have been largely ignored.

This note considers a principal–multi-agent model of a firm subject to adverse selection. With just the usual optimal (incentive-constrained) contracts being offered, there exist multiple (Bayes–Nash) equilibria in the agents' subgame. Moreover, from the agents' perspective, there exists an equilibrium that Pareto-dominates the equilibrium desired by the principal. By exploiting the structure of the model, this note develops a new approach for eliminating unwanted equilibria (while retaining the desired equilibrium).

This article examines the tax-compliance game between taxpayers, a tax-collecting agency, and third-party tax-return prepares. In our model, taxpayers are uncertain about their taxable income and may hire tax practitioners to reduce tax uncertainty. We examine the viability of tax practitioners as a signaling device (taking into account the effects on the behavior of the tax-collecting agency) and investigate the desirability of encouraging (or discouraging) the use of tax practitioners via the use of alternative tax-crediting rules.

In this study we compare the value relevance of accounting measures for U.S. and German firms matched on industry and firm size, and evaluate the incremental informativeness of earnings adjusted on the basis of a formula proposed by analysts.