Changling Chen

Idiosyncratic Return Volatility and the Information Quality Underlying Managerial Discretion

Variation in idiosyncratic return volatility from 1978 to 2009 is attributable to discretionary accrual volatility and the correlation between premanaged earnings and discretionary accruals reflective of information quality across firms. These results are robust to controls for firm operating uncertainty, growth options, business-cycle variations, and firm age and industry effects, and they highlight the importance of managerial discretion in determining idiosyncratic volatility.

Earnings Smoothing and Stock Price Crash Risk

We examine the relation between earnings smoothing and stock price crash risk to evaluate the role of earnings smoothing on the downside risk of equity values. We find that, within firm, a higher degree of earnings smoothing is associated with greater crash risk; and this association, in the cross-section, is more pronounced for firms with fewer analysts following, smaller institutional holdings, and positive cumulative discretionary accruals. We also use stock returns to assess the economic significance of our results. We find that, controlling for firm fixed effects, earnings smoothing is associated with sizable negative returns in the quarter following the earnings announcement. Our findings caution investors about the downside risk of firms reporting smooth earnings, in contrast to the conventional belief that these firms are low in equity risk.

Target Ownership Plan and Earnings Management

We examine the determinants of target ownership plans and their association with earnings management. We find that firms adopt target ownership plans not only in response to poor performance as documented by prior research, but also as a means to mitigate moral hazard concerns and in response to peer pressure. Our analyses show that firms engage in less accruals and real earnings management for up to two years following plan adoption. Additionally, we find that the reduction in accruals management is concentrated in adoption firms that have met the target ownership requirements, and in high probability adoption firms whose adoption decisions are driven by performance, moral hazard, governance, capital market, and peer-firm concerns. Our findings support the argument that target ownership plans align CEOs’ incentives with shareholders’ in that these plans result in reduced management short-termism as evidenced by more truthful earnings reporting and less real earnings management through production cost manipulation and discretionary expenditures.