An event study demonstrates that disclosures of changes in deferred tax valuation allowances (VA) provide information beyond contemporaneous earnings reports. Prior research shows that, in setting VA, managers consider the extent that taxable income is available from various sources for the...

The unprecedented migration of Andersen's clients that followed Andersen's indictment in March 2002 potentially placed a large burden on successor auditors' audit resources. We refer to this strain, measured at the local-office level, as auditor capacity stress. We examine the effect of auditor...

We examine the role of investment opportunities as a determinant of the relative importance of cash flows from operations (CFO) and accruals in firm valuation. We find that at low investment-opportunity levels, CFO value-relevance increases with investment opportunities. When investment...

This study addresses the role of audit committees and auditors in the reporting of internal control deficiencies after the passage of the Sarbanes Oxley Act (SOX). We find that a higher number of meetings of the audit committee, lesser proportion of quot;financial expertsquot; in the audit...

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act mandates the disclosure of whether at least one member of the audit committee is a financial expert. However, the final version of the rule adopted by the SEC defined experts to include both accounting and non-accounting experts. Did the SEC do the right thing? Are the...

Lately, several firms have decoupled audit and tax service providers to shore up the credibility of their financial statements. However, a number of other firms rely on the incumbent auditor for tax services. Do investors assign a lower valuation to firms that continue to use the auditor for tax...

Despite the obvious impact of the CFO and the CEO on a firm's financial statements, there is limited empirical evidence on whether and how the personal characteristics of senior management are associated with earnings management. We provide empirical evidence on the relation between earnings...

The issue of whether audit pricing reflects the risk of corporate governance failure is of fundamental interest to auditors, managers, and others. Auditors are expected to price corporate governance risk because it relates to the control risk and thus, the overall audit risk. This study examines...