This paper surveys the theoretical and empirical literature on the economic consequences of financial reporting and disclosure regulation. We integrate theoretical and empirical studies from accounting, economics, finance and law in order to contribute to the cross-fertilization of these fields....

The average cash-to-assets ratio for U.S. industrial firms more than doubles from 1980 to 2006. A measure of the economic importance of this increase in cash holdings is that at the end of the sample period, the average firm can pay back all of its debt obligations with its cash holdings; in...

The competition between IAS and US GAAP to become the global accounting standard has created a debate about the relative quality of the two standards. This paper compares IAS and US GAAP in terms of information asymmetry and market liquidity - two key constructs in securities regulation. It uses...

In this paper, we explain how enterprise risk management creates value for shareholders. In contrast to the existing finance literature, we emphasize the organizational benefits of risk management. We show how a firm should choose its risk appetite and measure risk when implementing enterprise...

Merton Miller was at the center of the transformation of academic finance from a descriptive field to a science. His principal contribution to this transformation was the introduction of arbitrage arguments which underlie most theoretical contributions in finance and remain central to the way...

Lang, Raedy and Wilson (2006) examine the properties of U.S. GAAP accounting numbers provided by cross-listed firms and compare them to those of U.S. firms. Using a wide range of properties related to earnings management, timely loss recognition, and value relevance, LRW show that accounting...

This paper discusses empirical evidence on the costs (and benefits) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), particularly from stock returns and firms' going-private decisions. Zhang (2006) analyzes stock returns around key legislative events and concludes that SOX and its provisions have imposed...

Motivated by the debate about globally uniform accounting standards, this paper investigates whether firms using US GAAP vis-a-vis IAS exhibit differences in several proxies for information asymmetry. The study exploits a unique setting where the two sets of standards are put on a level playing...

This paper examines the link between disclosure and the cost of capital. We exploit an exogenous cost of capital shock created by the Enron scandal in Fall 2001 and analyze firms' disclosure responses to this shock. These tests are opposite to the typical research design that analyzes cost of...