In multi‐task environments, the efficiency of aggregating managerial performance information and the degree of customization/standardization are closely related. Aggregation without information loss (i.e., statistically sufficient) requires at least as many measures as there are effective tasks (which arise through a task aggregation process analogous to that applied to homogeneous activities in activity‐based costing) and can be used uniformly for evaluation across similar jobs. Aggregation without economic loss (i.e., economically sufficient) can be achieved with a single performance measure but requires customization even across similar jobs. The main implication is that job complexity, the number of aggregate performance measures, and the degree of customization in performance measurement are interrelated. In particular, at the same level of performance measure aggregation, we predict highly customized performance evaluation in complex multi‐task jobs and standardized (uniform) performance evaluation only in simpler jobs with fewer tasks. We discuss additional empirical implications in the conclusion.

Shareholder valuations are economically significantly and statistically negatively correlated with the length of 10 K filings or their digital file sizes, whereas annual reports posted on corporate websites are uninformative. Firms with longer 10 K filings are likely to experience slower growth, lower profitability, experience free cash flow problems, and write off goodwill and intangible assets from past acquisitions. Lengthy filings are more damaging than suggested by three‐year performance following report filing dates, suggesting that outside investors penalize firms for information asymmetries and associated agency costs. Full disclosure is best from the standpoint of long‐term shareholder wealth, but managers could be maximizing short‐term term returns that better match their investment horizons.

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Direct real estate returns are correlated with shifts in weather patterns, which are proxied by changes in four moments of distribution for differences in average and maximum daily temperatures, deviations from optimal temperatures and climate risk index reported by Germanwatch. Changes in the volatility of daily temperatures are inversely correlated with direct real estate returns. The volatility effect appeared to be marginal in 1996-2007, but it became more pronounced in 2010-2017. Other moments of the distribution, including changes in means, skewness and kurtosis, fail to obtain predictive power. Results are robust to tests in a smaller sample of capital cities and the exclusion of observations with the most significant volatility increases.

Growing tax competition among national governments in the presence of capital mobility distorts equilibrium in the international corporate tax market. This paper is related to the literature that examines impact of international tax policies on corporate accounting statements. Employing international firm-level data, this study revisits the race-to-the-bottom hypothesis and documents that tax exemptions lowering effective tax rates relative to statutory rates increase pre-tax returns. This finding directly contradicts the implicit tax hypothesis documented by Wilkie (1992), who provided empirical evidence on inverse relationship between pre-tax return and tax subsidy. We also find evidences that relative importance of permanent versus timing component depends on the geography and that decline in corporate tax rates reduces impact of tax subsidies on profitability. Our findings suggest that tax subsidies play a different role than in 1968-1985, which was examined by Wilkie (1992). These results are consistent with the race-to-the-bottom hypothesis and income shifting explanation