Earnings - Publications - Faculty & Research

23 Jan 2025
News

Knowing What Your Colleagues Earn

June 18, 2014
Blog Post

How to Kill Quarterly Earnings Guidance

By: Gabriel Karageorgiou, Daniela Saltzman and George Serafeim

Keywords: Forecast; Short-termism; Sustainability; Earnings Management; Competitive Advantage

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January 2010
Article

Does Public Ownership of Equity Improve Earnings Quality?

We compare the quality of accounting numbers produced by two types of public firms-those with publicly traded equity and those with privately held equity that are nonetheless considered public by virtue of having publicly traded debt. We develop and test two... View Details

Keywords: Private Equity; Business Earnings; Public Equity

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January 1999 (Revised October 2010)
Background Note

Accumulated Earnings Tax and Personal Holding Company Tax

By: Henry B. Reiling and Mark Pollard

Identifies Congress's concerns and objectives in adopting the Accumulated Earnings Tax and the Personal Holding Company Tax. Also describes the provisions' mechanics and some of their practical implications. View Details

Keywords: Business Earnings; Taxation; Business and Government Relations; Business and Shareholder Relations; Public Administration Industry; United States

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June 2006
Article

CEO Incentives and Earnings Management

Keywords: Management; Motivation and Incentives; Profit

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April 1982 (Revised June 1985)
Case

Westinghouse Electric Corp.: Quality of Earnings Analysis

Westinghouse had just issued its annual report to shareholders for the year ending December 31, 1973. The report indicates that sales have increased to a record $5.7 billion but that net income is down almost 20% from its record level of $199 million in the previous... View Details

Keywords: Business Earnings; Financial Reporting; Corporate Finance; Electronics Industry

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01 Jun 2011
News

HBS Chapel Earns Gold Certification

In a first for Harvard University, the HBS Class of 1959 Chapel has achieved LEED gold certification for significant reductions in energy and water usage. In fact, the chapel is the first university building in the world to achieve gold status under the existing... View Details

Keywords: Construction of Buildings; Construction

13 Mar 2008
Working Paper Summaries

An Investigation of Earnings Management through Marketing Actions

Keywords: by Craig J. Chapman & Thomas J. Steenburgh

06 Feb 2006
What Do You Think?

Should CEOs of Public Companies Offer Earnings Guidance?

Summing Up Based on some of the most thoughtful comments to any of these columns, one might conclude that acceptable earnings guidance by CEOs should take on new forms. Let's first consider the pros and cons, then some research, then some... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Financial Services

January 2017
Article

Being Surprised by the Unsurprising: Earnings Seasonality and Stock Returns

By: Tom Y. Chang, Samuel M. Hartzmark, David H. Solomon and Eugene F. Soltes

We present evidence consistent with markets failing to properly price information in seasonal earnings patterns. Firms with historically larger earnings in one quarter of the year (“positive seasonality quarters”) have higher returns when those earnings are usually... View Details

Keywords: Business Earnings; Investment

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June 1985
Background Note

Computing and Analyzing Earnings per Share

By: David F. Hawkins

Keywords: Profit

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March 2009
Article

Earnings Management and Corporate Tax Shelters, and Book-Tax Alignment

By: Mihir Desai and Dhammika Dharmapala

This paper reviews recent evidence analyzing the link between earnings management and corporate tax avoidance and considers the implications for how policymakers should evaluate the financial reporting environment facing firms. A real-world tax shelter is dissected to... View Details

Keywords: Earnings Management; Taxation; Financial Reporting; Business and Shareholder Relations

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September 17, 2021
Article

AI Can Help Address Inequity—If Companies Earn Users' Trust

By: Shunyuan Zhang, Kannan Srinivasan, Param Singh and Nitin Mehta

While companies may spend a lot of time testing models before launch, many spend too little time considering how they will work in the wild. In particular, they fail to fully consider how rates of adoption can warp developers’ intent. For instance, Airbnb launched a... View Details

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence; Algorithmic Bias; Technological Innovation; Perception; Diversity; Equality and Inequality; Trust; AI and Machine Learning

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May 1995 (Revised April 1997)
Background Note

Basic and Diluted Earnings Per Share

By: David F. Hawkins

Keywords: Business Earnings

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08 Oct 2018
Research & Ideas

Knowing What Your Boss Earns Can Make You Work Harder

francescoch Learning that a co-worker earns more than you can decrease your job performance while increasing the likelihood of you searching for a new job, according to a new research study. On the other hand, learning what your manager... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne