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Abstract. This article examines the impact of one form of sales seasonality on the response of equity retums to earnings announcements in different quarters. We regress unexpected announcement period returns on unexpected earnings and compare the results for seasonal firms-those with sales consistently concentrated in the same quarter each year-to those of other firms. For seasonal firms, we find robust evidence of a greater regression intercept and some evidence of a greater eamings response coefficient in peak sales quarters than in nonpeak quarters. These results are consistent with a greater resolution of the uncertainty about seasonal firms* prospects in their peak sales quarters than in other quarters. Our evidence also shows that fourth-quarter earnings announcements have smaller stock price response coefficients than do interim announcements. Some prior has found smaller fourth-quarter eamings response coefficients for small but not large firms. We find some evidence that fourth-quarter earnings response coefficients are smaller than interim-quarter response coefficients for large firms as well as for small firms. This suggests that explanations for smaller fourth-quarter earnings response coefficients need to be applicable to both large and small firms.R6sum6. Les auteurs examinent, pour differents trimestres, l'incidence d'une forme de caract&re saisonnier des ventes sur la reaction du rendement des actions aux declarations de b^ndfices. Ils effectuent une analyse de regression des rendements imprdvus des trimestres par rapport aux b6n6fices impr^vus et comparent les resultats obtenus dans le cas des entreprises dont les activites sont saisonni&res-c'est-^-dire dont les ventes sont systematiquement concentrees dans le mSme trimestre chaque annee-^aux resuitats obtenus dans le cas des autres entre-* Accepted by Michael Gibbins. The authors thank the anonymous reviewers and workshop partidpants at Michigan State University for substantive and constructive comments on earlier versions of this article. They are also indebted to Barbara Gugliotta Pierce for her research assistance and Indiana University for the summer research support that fadlitated the completion of this project. The authors gratefully acknowledge the contribution of IBES Inc. for providing eamings per share forecast data, available through the Institutional Brokers Estimate System. These data are provided as part of a broad academic program to encourage earnings expectations researcb.

Codes of ethics are directly aimed at behavioral control, but they also affect a company’s ethical culture, which in turn concerns compliance and ethical behavior. To positively influence a company’s ethical culture, employees must be familiar with its code of ethics, perceive that top management is committed to the code, and believe that their peers also comply with the code. The evidence on whether a code’s design affects a company’s ethical culture is limited. This study’s factorial survey experiment contributes to this gap in two ways: first, it investigates whether a code’s design affects how easily the code can be learned and, therefore, contributes to code familiarity. Second, it examines how a code can convey expectations regarding top management’s commitment and peers’ behavior, both of which are part of ethical culture. The results indicate that a positive tone increases code familiarity, and a code signed by top managers sends a strong signal of their commitment to the code. Finally, various implications of the results for research and practice are discussed.

Corporate scandals led to an increased interest in improving managers' compliance. To this end, companies implement compliance programs including codes of conduct, compliance training, and whistle-blowing as core elements. Previous research has focused on the impact of the mere existence of one or several compliance program's elements on compliance. Compliance programs differ substantially from company to company, for instance, in how training is organized and how the code looks like. This makes direct comparisons of the results challenging. Until now, it is poorly understood if and how the design of a compliance program's element affects compliance. This paper investigates firstly, whether codes per se are an effective core element of compliance programs; secondly, whether the way a code is designed (e.g., by using examples) impacts on compliance; and thirdly, whether types of compliance training as well as whistle-blowing channels make a difference in terms of compliance and whistleblowing. We conducted a factorial survey experiment with 1005 managers from a multinational European corporation. Our findings indicate that not the mere existence of a code but its design matters for compliance. There is evidence that more specific compliance training is more effective than general training. Our study contributes to the business ethics literature by providing insights on how design elements of compliance program's elements matter. Finally, we also contribute to business practice as we draw up guidelines for those who are responsible for their compliance programs.

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