Clawback Adoptions and Management Earnings Forecasts
研究了美国企业自愿采纳追回条款后，管理层发布盈利预测的可能性和频率增加，且仅当财务报告质量实际提升时成立，对高信息不对称企业影响更大。
We examine the relation between voluntary clawback adoptions in the US and firms’ propensity to issue earnings forecasts and the frequency of such forecasts. We find that clawback adoptions are followed by an increase in the likelihood and frequency of managers issuing earnings forecasts. Further, we find this relation to hold only for firms with an actual increase in financial reporting quality following clawback adoption. We also observe a greater increase in the likelihood and frequency of management forecasts in the post-adoption period among adopters having higher ex-ante information asymmetry. Our results suggest that the improved financial reporting quality following clawback adoptions increases the verifiability (and credibility) of earnings forecasts making them more likely to be used. Our findings are of potential interest to regulators and investors in the US (and elsewhere) interested in the outcomes associated with clawback adoptions for firms’ information environment. In particular, now that clawback adoptions are mandatory (SEC, 2022) our findings suggest that the benefits associated with clawback adoptions may be expected only for a subset of (rather than all) companies subject to the mandate.