Using an extensive database of 356,463 sell-side equity analysts' reports from 2002 to 2009, this study is one of the first to analyze the readability of analysts' reports. We first examine the determinants of variations in analyst report readability. Using several proxies for ability, we show...

We examine whether international equity mutual-fund managers shift their portfolios toward stocks with higher financial reporting quality during periods of high political uncertainty. Our study is motivated by two primary factors. First, prior research shows evidence of fund managers' “flight...

Multinational firms have been accused by politicians, regulators, and citizen groups of shifting profits to low-tax geographic areas. We present evidence that multinational firms with tax-haven operations tend to aggregate their geographic disclosures to a greater extent. The results are...

Practitioners have long criticized risk-factor disclosures in the 10-K as generic and boilerplate. In response, regulators emphasize the importance of being specific. By using a computing algorithm, this paper establishes a new measure (Specificity) to quantify the level of specificity of firms'...

Recent theoretical and empirical studies suggest that blockholders (shareholders with ownership ≥ 5%) exert governance through the threat of exit. Blockholders have strong incentives to gather private information and sell their shares when managers are perceived to underperform. To prevent...

This study analyzes determinants and effects of differences between Domestic Accounting Standards (DAS) and International Accounting Standards (IAS). We use an extensive list of differences between DAS and IAS to create two indices, absence and divergence. Absence measures the extent to which...

We use a novel dataset that links audit-firm and client-firm financial statement information from the U.K.’s largest audit firms to examine drivers of audit-firm profitability and its implications for audit outcomes conveyed by Key Audit Matter (KAM) disclosures. We first explore the...