We provide evidence of the impact of Auditing Standard No. 2 (“AS 2”), issued pursuant to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (“SarBox”), on the outcome of auditors in financial reporting litigation. Specifically, we focus on the existence of financial restatements and how and why they...

Imagine if we stopped deciding basketball games by baskets alone. Instead, victory would be determined by a combination of baskets, rebounds, steals, and fouls. Each of these is universally acknowledged as a critical component of the game. Why not reward them directly instead of indirectly, by...

Managers exercise considerable discretion over how they announce an accounting restatement in a press release. Some firms issue a press release that discloses the restatement in the headline (high prominence). Others provide a press release with a headline on a different subject (for example,...

In shareholder litigation, judges and litigants choose from a menu of valuation methods that is evolving over time. What drives demand for new valuation methods? Does valuation method choice affect a judge's final appraisal? Is a judge more likely to favor the litigant whose valuation method...

Event studies, a half-century-old approach to measuring the effect of events on stock prices, are now ubiquitous in securities fraud litigation. In determining whether the event study demonstrates a price effect, expert witnesses typically base their conclusion on whether the results are...

This study examines the trading behavior of a large sample of individual (retail) investors around securities litigation events. We test the hypothesis that the response of these investors around the end of the litigation class period (at the time of a corrective disclosure) and the start of the...

Over the last decade, financial economists have grown increasingly circumspect about the practical meaning of market efficiency due to the so-called joint hypothesis problem. In law, however, the concept has taken on an increasingly prominent role, meaning that the need for an operational...