Variables	Definition
Asset Intensity	Ratio of total assets to sales revenue
Asymmetric Cost Behavior	The difference in a firm’s cost changes responding to positive versus negative changes in sales, measured using β₂, the coefficient of $D e c_{i, t} \ln (\frac{S a l e s_{i, t}}{S a l e s_{i, t - 1}})$ in Model (2)
Break	Indicator variable set to 1 if earnings in year t is less than earnings in year t − 1 but earnings in year t − 1 is more than earnings in year t − 2, and 0 otherwise
Cost Flexibility	A firm’s ability to adjust its costs, measured using β₁, the coefficient of $\ln (\frac{S a l e s_{i, t}}{S a l e s_{i, t - 1}})$ in Model (1)
Dec	Dummy variable that equals to 1 if a firm’s current year sales are less than last year, and 0 otherwise
Demand Uncertainty	Standard deviation of $\ln (\frac{S a l e s_{i, t}}{S a l e s_{i, t - 1}})$ for the past five years
Employee Intensity	Ratio of the number of employees to sales revenue
EPS	Earnings per share
Operating Costs (OC)	Annual sales revenue minus income from operations
∆OC_i_,t	Difference between OC_i_,t and OC_i_,t₋₁
Sales	Sales revenue
$\ln (\frac{S a l e s_{i, t}}{S a l e s_{i, t - 1}})$ , or ∆lnS	Difference between lnSales_i_,t and lnSales_i_,t₋₁, noted as ∆lnS in Table 3, Table 4 and Table 6
∆Sales_i_,t or ∆S	Difference between Sales_i_,t and Sales_i_,t₋₁, noted as ∆S in Table 9
Consecutive Revenue Growth Ratio	Firm-level measure defined as the ratio of the number of years in consecutive sales increases to the total number of years of observation
SIZE	Firm-level measure for size, calculated as GDP-adjusted average sales for each firm, assuming 1973 as the base year for GDP adjustment.
Stock Performance	Raw stock return in the prior fiscal year
Successive Decrease	Indicator variable that equals to 1 if a firm’s last year sales are less than the year before last year, and 0 otherwise