This paper puts under the magnifying glass the path to failure of Sunbeam Corp. and emphasizes the reasons of its singularity and exceptionality. This corporate case emerges as an outlier from the analysis of the US fraud cases mentioned by WebBRD: the consideration of the time between fraud...

Recently, South Africa has suffered from several large financial statement frauds. To assist stakeholders in identifying fraud, this study investigated the ability of the Beneish M-score and the Dechow et al. F-score to identify fraud in South Africa. The study also explored similarities in...

This paper investigates the causal effects of voluntary information disclosures on a bank's expected default probability, enterprise risk, and value. I measure disclosure via a self-constructed index for the largest 80 U.S. bank holding companies for the period 1998-2011. I provide evidence that...

Enron's collapse is generally viewed as a morality tale - the natural result of managerial greed, a clueless board, and feckless gatekeepers. But none of these aspects of the story clearly distinguishes Enron from other major firms during the bubble era of the late 90s. This material identifies...

Not surprisingly, the recent accounting scandals look different when viewed from the perspectives of the political/regulatory process and of the market for corporate governance and financial reporting. We do not have the opportunity to observe a world in which either market or...

We examine the deterrence effect of whistleblower laws on accounting fraud. We exploit state False Claims Acts (FCAs), under which reporting fraud at a firm invested in by a state's pension fund can result in monetary rewards from that state's government. Using staggered adoption of FCAs between...

Most accounting studies use only public enforcement actions (SEC cases) to measure accounting fraud. However, private cases (securities class actions) also play an important enforcement role. We discuss the legal standards and processes for both public and private enforcement regimes, emphasize...

We examine how an auditor assesses the risk of fraud and formulates an audit plan when the auditee has the opportunity to commit various types of fraud. Unlike previous studies, the auditee can misappropriate assets (also called defalcation), misreport financial information (also called...

Accounting scandals are becoming perpetual in nature. They range from the ancient Mesopotamia, to the South Sea Bubble of 1720, to the famous Enron of 2001, down to Parmalat, Tesco and Toshiba of today. The series of accounting scandals that have occurred in the last two decades calls for a...