The tax auditing context is illustrative of a more general set of situations in which regulators attempt to extract information from entities over whom they have oversight (Border and Sobel 1987). Hence evaluating the impact of various features of the tax setting can provide important insights...

Although prior studies provide evidence on the financial reporting incentives to inflate core earnings through classification shifting (e.g., shifting core expenses to income-decreasing non-core items), few examine the tax-related incentive to report lower core earnings through classification...

During the late 1990's, the SEC alleged that banks were overstating their loan loss allowances to establish cookie jar reserves and issued new guidance on allowance estimation designed to improve financial reporting quality. We show that banks' estimation methods changed in response to the...

Banks' use of accounting discretion in estimating loan loss provisions (LLPs) during the financial crisis has come under severe criticism. We argue, however, that it is during periods of instability like the financial crisis that accounting discretion is most relevant. We find that the...

Using D&O insurance premia from the 2001-2004 Tillinghast D&O insurance surveys as a proxy for litigation risk, we show that audit fees are positively associated with litigation risk even after controlling for several quantitative risk factors known to influence both the insurance premium and...