题目：“After You!” Timing of Earnings Releases Under Relative Performance Evaluation

主讲人：Guojin Gong 副教授 （Pennsylvania State University）

时间：2016年6月3日15:00 

地点：主楼132

主讲人介绍：      
    Guojin Gong is currently an Associate Professor of Accounting at the Smeal College of Business.  She holds a Ph.D. in Accounting from University of Iowa, a M.S. in Economics from Washington University at St. Louis, and a B.A. in Economics from Peking University in China.  Her research interests are in financial disclosure and corporate governance, with a focus on voluntary disclosure and executive compensation.  Her research has been published in leading academic journals such as The Accounting Review, Contemporary Accounting Research, Journal of Accounting Research, Journal of Accounting and Economics, Journal of Finance, Review of Accounting Studies, and Management Science.  In addition, her research has been featured in Wall Street Journal and other business media. Professor Gong’s teaching interests include financial reporting, financial statement analysis, and equity valuation. 

内容介绍： 

    Under relative performance evaluation (RPE), managers are compensated based on their performance relative to a chosen peer group. We posit that observing more peers’ performance enables RPE firms to more accurately estimate the performance level required to achieve performance targets, which may motivate managers to delay the release of performance to facilitate last-minute reporting manipulation. Results show that RPE firms are more likely to barely meet or beat accounting-based relative performance targets when they announce earnings later than a large number of selfchosen peers. This finding is more pronounced when the compensatory incentive to achieve performance targets is greater, when more executives have aligned incentives to achieve the same performance targets, and when RPE firms can better estimate their relative performance by announcing late. Moreover, late-announcing RPE firms report higher accruals, larger increase in accounts receivable, and lower tax expenses. We further document that late-announcing RPE firms tend to select early announcers as peers and delay earnings releases after the initial adoption of RPE contracts. Our evidence suggests strategic timing of earnings releases and associated reporting discretion in response to relative performance targets, which challenges the conventional belief that setting performance targets relative to peers can effectively dissuade managers from reporting manipulation

（承办：会计系，科研与学术交流中心）