Finally, our study complements Pan et al. (2013), who show that firms dis invest in the first couple of years of CEO's tenure and increase investment subsequently.They argue that in the early years of service, CEO dis invests poorly performing assets that his/her predecessor established and was unwilling to sell. Subsequently, the CEO over invests after gaining more control over the board.We argue that the incentive to manage earnings also changes with CEOs' tenure. Our finding that discretionary expenses, such as R&D, advertising, and SG&A are smaller in the early than the later years of CEOs' service is consistent with the Pan et al. (2013) investment story. However, our earnings management story seems just as viable since these expenditures are not capitalized as an investment on the books and cutting them improves earnings.Moreover, our results that discretionary accruals are greater in the early years of CEOs' service, that these discretionary accruals reverse in subsequent years, and that write-offs affect reported income unfavorable in the CEO change year but not in the two subsequent years are consistent with our earnings management story and cannot be explained away by the Pan et al.'s investment story.