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This paper provides a comprehensive exploration of the types of accounting fraud committed by firms over the period 1995-2009. Using detailed data from US SEC Accounting and Auditing Enforcement Releases (AAER), we examine the likelihood and timing of analyst coverage decisions and recommendation revisions related to fraud firms versus firms without accounting fraud. We find that analysts have a higher probability of taking the more severe action of dropping coverage rather than only revising down recommendations for firms with any type of accounting fraud and also for specific egregious types of accounting fraud. Through the use of competing hazards models, we also find that accounting frauds and their egregiousness are positively (negatively) associated with the timeliness of the analysts’ action to drop coverage (revise only). Overall, we find that analysts’ actions may be useful in determining the occurrence of accounting fraud prior to the public announcement of the fraud.

Increasingly, shareholders and regulators have been calling for a reigning in of executive salaries. Most of this discussion has focused on bonuses and stock options, the more observable portions of an executive compensation package. However long term incentive pay, such as supplemental executive retirement plans (SERPs), has become a significant portion of executive compensation and is more difficult to monitor. This paper examines whether managers use real earnings management in the form of Accelerated Share repurchases (ASR) to increase total compensation through this more obscure or ‘stealth’, area of pay. This is because ASRs tend to have a more immediate and significant impact on EPS versus open market repurchases (OMRs). While SERPs provide an opportunity for CEOs to hide compensation, stronger managerial power may enhance this opportunity. We find evidence that managers who have SERPs in place are significantly more likely to choose ASRs versus OMRs. We also find that as executives’ horizon shorten, they are also more likely to use this stronger form of earnings management (ASR). Additionally, we find that, on average, ASR firms have higher managerial power than OMR firms. Finally, we are able to provide direct evidence of the economic significance of SERP programs. Additional analyses provide further support for the link between SERPs and real earnings management in the form of share repurchase choice.

We examine whether analysts anticipate the public disclosure of accounting frauds by studying a sample of companies that have committed fraud as evidenced by the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) issuance of an Accounting and Auditing Enforcement Release (AAER). We use survival analysis to determine when analysts drop coverage and revise their recommendations down prior to the public disclosure of fraud. Our analyses indicate some evidence that analysts anticipate fraud and use different signals to inform investors about different fraud types. For example, firms that commit larger frauds are significantly more likely to have analysts drop coverage earlier in the period preceding the public announcement, but are not significantly more likely to show downward revisions in recommendations. We also find that analysts appear to be fooled by fictitious frauds - they are no more likely to drop coverage or revise down earlier prior to public disclosure for firms that commit these frauds versus firms that do not commit fictitious frauds. Finally, our results show that the decision and timing of dropping coverage is not correlated with revision of forecasts, indicating that analysts consider different variables for the two decisions.

In this study we examine differences between sophisticated and unsophisticated investors' incorporation of information about the accuracy of sell-side analysts' revisions of quarterly earnings forecasts. Our results indicate that sophisticated investors' weights on information cues associated with accuracy more closely match the weights derived from environmental models of forecast accuracy. Further, our findings suggest that sophisticated investors' strategies better reflect the costs and benefits of using accuracy cues that provide statistically significant, but economically small, explanatory power for forecast accuracy. Our evidence is consistent with sophisticated investors having greater knowledge about the factors that are related to forecast accuracy and exhibiting more adaptive cue-weighting strategies.