This is a selection from Professor Abraham Briloff (deceased in 2014) from his book, More Debits than Credits: The Burnt Investors Guide to Financial Statements, Harper and Rowe, New York, 1976. Abraham Jacob Briloff was born on July 19, 1917, in Manhattan. His parents, Benjamin and Anna, were...

'Then felt I like some watcher of the skies when a new planet swims into his ken' (John Keats). In 1932, Professors Adolf A. Berle and Gardiner C. Means published The Modern Corporation and Private Property. In that seminal work, the professors described the alienation of power over property by...

This study examines the association between the quality of audit and the characteristics of institutional investors, using French data. After the Enron scandal, the perception of the Big 4 by French institutional investors changed. Our first hypothesis focuses on the relation between French...

The internet has been increasingly used for corporate dissemination of information, including providing annual reports on the internet. While the use of the internet for the communication of financial information has several benefits, there is little doubt it raises a variety of challenging...

It has been several decades since I served as an Enforcement Director at the SEC, however, the recent turmoil in the financial markets that led to a worldwide recession bear an uncanny resemblance to events in times long gone. The unchecked excesses of bankers and corporate executives today are...

This paper examines the implications of Sarbanes-Oxley on stock option backdating. The focus of this research analyses previous literature both pre- and post-Sarbanes-Oxley. As the literature presents, before SOX was implemented, the reporting lag for grant filings increased the degree of...

This study investigates the effect of modified audit opinions on the emerging Tunisian Stock Market. The empirical association between qualified audit opinion and stock market reaction has been studied extensively in the accounting literature and reported mixed results. By using the cumulative...