Although theory suggests that companies would rationally select into audit even if it were not a legal requirement, many countries impose mandatory audits. This is arguably due to an audit having elements of a public good, which may result in not enough audits being purchased without regulatory...

In the UK, SSAP 13 requires that firms immediately expense most of their R&D expenditures.The reported earnings of high-R&D expenditure firms are therefore likely to convey less valuerelevantinformation to investors than those of less research-intensive firms. Using a sample offirms from the...

Unusually high accounting accruals are observable to sophisticated investors, who must then decide whether the accruals represent managerial manipulation of reported earnings or an indication of future firm performance. We hypothesise that both cash and stock dividends contain information useful...

The information environment in China has been found to be so opaque as to prevent investors from being able to formulate valuations of companies based upon firm-specific information, a situation which promotes inefficiency in the allocation of resources in an economy and stunts its growth. The...

We examine the practice of share repurchases in the UK. We find that an important regulatory reform in 2003, which relaxed previously strict rules about repurchases, was followed by a significant increase in repurchase activity by UK listed firms. However, unlike in the US, repurchases remain a...

Theory suggests that, under certain assumptions, corporate distributions should reduce market value on a one-to-one basis. This result is sometimes known as dividend displacement. Nonetheless, dividend displacement tends to be rejected by empirical tests for total dividends and regular...

In 2003, a new UK corporate governance Code recommended that the CEO should not become chairman of the same firm. The UK regulator, adopting an agency theory perspective, argued that this prevents powerful CEOs from clinging to power, to the detriment of firm performance. An alternative...

This paper examines share price behaviour surrounding announcements of CEO departures from UK firms listed on the All Share Index between 1990 and 1995. We find that many firms choose not to announce CEO departures, and that these firms have poorer performance records, and higher chances of...

We examine the practice of share repurchases in the UK from 2000 to 2016 We find that an important regulatory reform in 2003, which relaxed previously strict rules about repurchases, was followed by a significant increase in repurchase activity by UK main-market listed firms We then examine the...