Companies commonly offer temporary price discounts to stimulate product demand. Despite the considerable impact that such promotional strategies have on performance, firms disclose limited information regarding the extent to which they provide discounts. In this study, I evaluate whether market participants understand the implications of current period couponing activity – a special case of price discounts – for future performance. Using a sample of public manufacturers, I use transaction-level data to construct a firm-level measure of couponing activity and find that earnings are less persistent when generated with heavy reliance on couponing. Further, greater couponing in the current quarter increases analyst optimism for future periods, leading to an increased likelihood that the firm misses analyst expectations in the subsequent period (which results in predictably negative earnings announcement returns). Collectively, my findings highlight how market participants’ forecasting and trading decisions can benefit from information regarding price discounting.

This study investigates the relation between the line of service (audit, tax, advisory) of Big Four office managing partners (OMPs) and both non-audit service fees and audit quality. Given that audit quality has been shown to vary across offices and because changes in office-level leadership can impact the office culture, I examine the impact of the OMP’s line of service on non-audit service fees and audit quality. I find that when an accounting firm office changes leadership to an advisory OMP, non-audit service revenues increase while audit quality suffers. This finding is consistent with advisory partners encouraging an office culture that emphasizes selling non-audit services more than conducting quality audits. Overall, this study provides evidence consistent with regulators’ concerns that the recent trend toward greater advisory services at the largest accounting firms reduces their focus on providing high-quality audits, thereby leading to decreased audit quality.