The audit market's unique combination of features - its role in capital market transparency, mandated demand, and concentrated supply - means it receives considerable attention from policymakers. We explore the effects of two market scenarios that have been the focus of policy discussions:...

Do accruals-based accounting earnings provide better information to investors about future operating cash flows than operating cash flows themselves, as predicted by FASB's conceptual framework? The most recent evidence (Nallareddy et al., 2020) is that operating cash flows, measured correctly...

We find that the public disclosure of regulators' supervisory actions changes their enforcement behavior. Using a novel sample of enforcement actions and orders (EDOs) and the setting of the 1989 Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act (FIRREA), which required public...

I develop a structural model to quantify the costs of tax avoidance. In the model, the firm trades off tax savings with tax-audit risk, financial-reporting benefits, and non-tax costs (which affect pre-tax income). The comparative statics suggest tax avoidance is path-dependent, which can help...

We find that Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) had two significant effects on the audit market for nonpublic entities. The first short-run effect stems from inelastic labor supply coupled with an audit demand shock from public companies. As a result, private companies reduced their use of attested financial...

We utilize branch-level data on deposits of commercial banks in India to study heterogeneity in depositors' responses to the disclosure of significant regulatory penalties. We find that men respond to such monetary penalties by withdrawing their deposits, whereas women do not. However, relative...

We investigate the extent to which hedge fund managers smooth self‐reported returns. In contrast with prior research on the “anomalous” properties of hedge fund returns, we observe the mechanisms used to price the fund's investment positions and report the fund's performance to investors,...

We estimate the firm-level rate at which working capital accruals convert into future cash flows. These conversion rates determine the expected cash value of a dollar of working capital accruals. For firms whose accrual innovations reverse within one year, we find that, on average, a one dollar...

We use a long time-series from Australia to investigate the determinants and (to a lesser extent) consequences of audit market concentration. We show that increasing skewness in the size of public companies is associated with increased audit market concentration, and that the growth of the large...

We examine the relation between mark-to-market (MTM) accounting for securities and information asymmetry among bank investors. Relative to historical cost, MTM incorporates more timely information in financial statements. The primary effect of more timely disclosure most likely is to reduce...