A common criticism of prior experimental studies that examine financial reporting issues is that M.B.A. students recruited to complete a financial statement analysis or in- vestment task are somehow different from actual nonprofessional investors and, therefore, results may not generalize. For example, the average M.B.A. student likely has less experience buying and selling equity securities than the average nonprofessional investor, but likely has greater formal training in accounting, finance, and other business subjects. The question is not whether M.B.A. students are better or worse than nonprofessional investors at performing financial analysis tasks, but rather whether their judgments and decisions are similar such that the conclusions drawn from studies using M.B.A. students will inform us about the likely behavior of nonprofessional investors. Libby et al. (2002) argue that experiments that focus on the judgments of nonprofessional investors only require participants who possess basic accounting and investing knowledge. M.B.A. students often have some accounting and investing knowledge and therefore could fit these criteria. In fact, Libby et al. (2002) caution against using market participants unless it is necessary to achieve a specific research goal because they are a valuable and scarce resource.1