<heading id="h1" level="1" implicit="yes" format="display">ABSTRACT</heading>We investigate the relations among voluntary disclosure, earnings quality, and cost of capital. We find that firms with good earnings quality have more expansive voluntary disclosures (as proxied by a self-constructed index of coded items found in 677 firms' annual reports and 10-K...

<heading id="h1" level="1" implicit="yes" format="display">ABSTRACT</heading>The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) mandates management evaluation and independent audits of internal control effectiveness. The mandate is costly to firms but may yield benefits through lower information risk that translates into lower cost of equity. We use unaudited pre-SOX 404 disclosures...

<heading id="h1" level="1" implicit="yes" format="display">ABSTRACT</heading>In this paper we examine the effect of managerial ownership on financial reporting conservatism. Separation of ownership and control gives rise to agency problems between managers and shareholders. Financial reporting conservatism is one potential mechanism to address these agency...

We reexamine prior studies' conclusion that accruals are less persistent than cash, focusing on two aspects of persistence that are crucial to determining its properties. The first (time specificity) refers to the fact that persistence describes how "current-period" shocks to income translate...