Strategic Silence, Insider Selling and Litigation Risk

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Accounting Papers
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disclosure
earnings guidance
insider trading
litigation risk
earnings disappointment
negative earnings news
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Economics
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Billings, Mary Brooke
Cedergren, Matthew C
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Abstract

Prior work finds that managers beneficially time their purchases, but not sales, prior to forecasts. Focusing on if (as opposed to when) a forecast is given, we link insider selling to silence in advance of earnings disappointments. This raises the question of whether the absence of incriminating trading drives reductions in litigation risk potentially attributed to warnings. We find that the absence of a warning combined with the presence of selling exacerbates the consequences associated with the individual behaviors. Yet, selling prior to a warning typically does not offset all of the warning׳s benefit. In so doing, we supply the first robust evidence of a litigation benefit associated with warning.

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2015-04-01
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Journal of Accounting and Economics
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At the time of publication, author Matthew C. Cedergren was affiliated with New York University. Currently (October, 2014), he is a faculty member at the Accounting Department at the University of Pennsylvania.
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