There is extensive evidence of discontinuities in distributions of reported earnings at prominent earnings benchmarks, where distributions comprise fewer observations immediately below the benchmark and more observations immediately above the benchmark than are expected if the distribution is smooth. 1 For example, Burgstahler and Dichev (1997,hereafter BD) show that distributions of scaled earnings exhibit discontinuities at zero.In addition,BD document that the strength of discontinuities varies with the costs and benefits of meeting benchmarks.