About

John E. Core is the Nanyang Technological University Professor and a Professor of Accounting at the MIT Sloan School of Management. His broad research interests include executive compensation and executive stock and option incentives, corporate governance, nonprofit governance, and disclosure and the cost of capital. His research has been published in prominent journals such as the Accounting Review, the Journal of Accounting & Economics, the Journal of Accounting Research, the Journal of Finance, and the Journal of Financial Economics. When not conducting research, Core teaches the core Financial Accounting class to first-year MBA students at MIT Sloan. Prior to his academic career, he worked in investment banking for PaineWebber and in compensation consulting for Ernst & Young. He holds a BA from Yale University and a PhD from The Wharton School.

Research topics

• Economics
• Business
• Accounting
• Microeconomics
• Finance
• Monetary economics
• Financial economics
• Actuarial science
• Psychology

Selected publications

• Contextual Corporate Governance

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Editorial data

  Journal of Accounting and Economics · 2024-01-30

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Editorial data

  Journal of Accounting and Economics · 2024-04-01

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Is U.S. CEO Compensation Broken?

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2023-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Editorial data

  Journal of Accounting and Economics · 2023-11-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Non-Price and Price Performance Vesting Provisions and CEO Incentives

  The Accounting Review · 2022 · 12 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Economics
  • Business
  • Accounting

  ABSTRACT A large body of empirical work provides mixed support for the central prediction from agency theory that noisier performance measures receive less weight in incentive contracts. We develop a method to calculate price-based and non-price-based performance measure weights using CEO pay and holdings of stock, options, and performance-vested awards. Consistent with theory, we find that noisier performance measures receive less weight. We find that this negative relation strengthened following the adoption of ASC 718 (formerly SFAS 123R), which equalized the accounting treatment for options and other share-based awards. We further find that firms that increased non-price incentives for CEOs realized improvements in ROA and in Tobin's Q. Our results suggest that misaligned incentives prior to ASC 718, and the under-weighting of non-price measures in particular, negatively affected firm performance. JEL Classifications: G30; J33; M12; M52.

  PublisherDOI

• The real effects of financial reporting on pay and incentives

  Accounting and Business Research · 2020 · 21 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Economics
  • Accounting
  • Business

  This paper discusses two real effects of financial reporting on pay and incentives: (1) Better earnings leads to better incentives, and (2) If pay is mismeasured, pay can be misused. The first real effect follows from the fact that incentives are often based on earnings, and the effectiveness of earnings-based incentives is positively related to the quality of earnings. Greater use of earnings in incentives provides better incentives at a lower cost. The second real effect has to do with how well the accounting system measures the expense of various pay components. Complex calculations are required to value complex pay components such as options, post-employment benefits, and performance-vested equity, and these calculations have historically not been done correctly. The incorrect accounting leads to these pay components being misused. I conclude by discussing how accounting and disclosure of pay and incentives can be improved.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Institutional Investor Attention and Firm Disclosure

  The Accounting Review · 2020 · 178 citations

  • Business
  • Accounting
  • Monetary economics

  ABSTRACT We study how short-term changes in institutional owner attention affect managers' disclosure choices. Holding institutional ownership constant and controlling for industry-quarter effects, we find that managers respond to attention by increasing the number of forecasts and 8-K filings. Rather than alter the decision of whether to forecast or to provide more informative disclosures, attention causes minor disclosure adjustments. This variation in disclosure is primarily driven by passive investors. Although attention explains significant variation in the quantity of disclosure, we find little change in abnormal volume and volatility, the bid-ask spread, or depth. Overall, our evidence suggests that management responds to temporary institutional investor attention by making disclosures that have little effect on information quality or liquidity. JEL Classifications: G23; G32; G34; G12; G14.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Real Effects of Financial Reporting on Pay and Incentives

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2020-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Institutional Investor Attention and Firm Disclosure

  LA Referencia (Red Federada de Repositorios Institucionales de Publicaciones Científicas) · 2019-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  We study how short-term changes in institutional owner attention affect managers’ short-term
\ndisclosure choices. Holding institutional ownership constant and controlling for industry-quarter
\neffects, we find that managers respond to attention by increasing the number of forecasts and 8-K
\nfilings. Rather than alter the decision of whether to forecast or to provide more informative disclosures, attention causes minor disclosure adjustments. Although attention explains significant variation in the quantity of disclosure, we find little change in abnormal volume and volatility, the bid-ask spread, or depth. Overall, our evidence suggests that management responds to temporary
\ninstitutional investor attention by making disclosures that have little effect on information quality or liquidity.

  OA PDF

Frequent coauthors

• Wayne R. Guay

  University of Pennsylvania

  50 shared

• Rodrigo S. Verdi

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  11 shared

• J.A. Cooper

  9 shared

• David F. Larcker

  European Corporate Governance Institute

  8 shared

• Robert E. Verrecchia

  University of Pennsylvania

  5 shared

• I. N. Abramova

  London Business School

  5 shared

• Randall S. Thomas

  5 shared

• Andrew Sutherland

  4 shared

Labs

• MIT SloanPI