The purpose of this paper is to provide a descriptive analysis of companies' previously uncorrected financial statement misstatements using disclosures recently mandated by Staff Accounting Bulletin No. 108 (SAB 108). We analyze 355 companies that disclose and correct 792 misstatements in their...

Positioned in a lively current debate concerning how to design auditor incentives to optimize financial statement auditing, this Article presents the more ambitious financial statement insurance alternative. This breaks from the existing securities regulation framework to draw directly on...

A new method of forecasting the pricing kernel, i.e., stochastic claim inflation or link ratio function, of incurred but not reported (IBNR) claims (in property casualty insurance) from residuals in a dynamic claims forecast model is presented. We employ a pseudo Kalman filter approach by using...

The collapse of Colonial Life Insurance Company (Trinidad) Limited caused one of the most significant financial events in recent history in the Eastern Caribbean region. The significance of the groups collapse warranted the establishment of a commission to gather information on its root causes....

This paper studies the relevance of audit qualifications and auditor selection for the external stakeholders of private companies in code-law countries. Employing a sample of private Spanish firms, we find that the cost of debt is not influenced by auditor opinion, but it is strongly influenced...

Prior studies document that firms using a Big 4 auditor have a lower cost of capital than other firms. We extend this literature by examining whether using an industry specialist auditor reduces cost of capital for clients of Big 4 audit firms. We document that firms that use Big 4 auditors that...

Previous evidence of conservatism in Australian financial reporting, as in other countries, is constrained by the absence of a reliable firm-year specific measure. This paper calibrates such a measure using the procedure outlined by Khan and Watts (2007). We show that the C_Score they propose...

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the change in quality of the information environment pre- and post-Enron. We test whether the reputations of all auditors declined as a result of Enron. The impact on the market risk premium is also examined. An information processing model is...

This study tests for differences in audit quality among Big Auditors and between Big Auditors and Small Auditors. The analysis is conducted using four separate quot;auditor erasquot; during the period from January 1980 through December 2003, with each era reflecting the number of Big Auditors in...

This study investigates the link between audit quality and the market's perception of the value of discretion in accounting for Ramp;D costs (Australian GAAP permits Ramp;D costs to be capitalized) and the impact of changes in that discretion. The study examines companies reporting of...