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...

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...

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...

With the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) now considering the question, we examine 16 different definitions of income across three applications: information content, predictive ability and executive compensation contracting. Our results reveal that comprehensive income defined by...

Using a large sample of audit client firms, this paper investigates whether and how the geographic proximity between auditor and client affects audit quality proxied by accrual-based earnings quality. We define an auditor as a local auditor if the auditor's practicing office is located in the...

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...

Following large-scale auditor consolidations in the late 1980s and early 1990s, along with Arthur Andersen's collapse in 2001, the global audit market has become highly concentrated during the past 30 years. Many interested parties, including regulators, researchers, and practitioners, disagree...

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...

This study examines how auditors' reputational damage caused by litigation affects audit clients' borrowing costs. Focusing on a sample of syndicated loans made to non-litigated borrowers, we find that borrowing costs are higher when the firms' auditors are sued for alleged audit failures....