Concerns are commonly raised that strong public unions extract generous pension benefits from state governments and are the cause of states' burdensome pension obligations. Prior research (Anzia and Moe 2015) finds evidence supporting such concerns. Consistent with incentives to minimize such...

This study examines whether having accounting experts on audit committees can mitigate the upward bias of expected rates of return (ERR) on pension plan assets documented in prior research. ERRs are found to be lower in firms with accounting expertise on their audit committees. These results are...

We investigate whether quarterly annual effective tax rate (ETR) estimates are systematically biased in comparison to year-end actual ETRs. We find that estimated annual ETRs in the first, second, and third quarters are systematically higher than year-end ETRs. We then investigate whether...

Using the unique reporting environment in Korea, this study investigates the determinants of human resource investment in internal controls for 1352 listed firms disclosing the number of personnel who are in charge of internal control-related tasks (IC personnel) from 2005 to 2008. We find that...

Using the unique reporting environment in Korea, this study investigates the determinants of human resource investment in internal controls for 1352 listed firms disclosing the number of personnel who are in charge of internal control-related tasks (IC personnel) from 2005 to 2008. We find that...

Using a large sample of U.S. audit client firms over the period 2000-2005, this paper investigates whether and how the size of a local practice office within an audit firm (henceforth, office size) is a significant, engagement-specific factor determining audit quality and audit fees over and...

Using a large sample of audit client firms over the 2002-2005 period, this paper investigates whether and how the locality of auditor or the geographic proximity between auditors and clients affects audit quality and audit pricing. We use two measures of abnormal accruals to draw inferences...

Using a sample of 9,820 firm-year observations over the 2000-2003 period, this paper examines whether, and how, audit quality proxied by unsigned discretionary accruals is associated with the abnormal audit fee, i.e., the difference between actual audit fee and auditors' expectation on the...

We find that financial statement comparability enhances the ability of current period returns to reflect future earnings, as measured by the future earnings response coefficient (FERC). Thus, comparability improves the informativeness of stock prices and allows investors to better anticipate...

We investigate whether the financial riskiness of large US audit firm clienteles varied with the changing audit litigation liability environment during the period 1975-1999. Partitioning the period of study into four distinct periods [a benchmark period (1975-1984), a period of increasing...