Events leading up to the implementation of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) increased the public's focus on corporate governance and increased regulatory scrutiny of corporate governance mechanisms. These events also contributed to a massive restructuring in the audit market which resulted...

We re-examine the widely held belief that analysts' earnings per share (EPS) forecasts are superior to random walk (RW) time-series forecasts. We investigate whether analysts' annual EPS forecasts are superior, and if so, under what conditions. Simple RW EPS forecasts are more accurate than...

This paper provides evidence on firms that report long quot;stringsquot; of consecutive increases in earnings per share (EPS). First, we find 746 firms that report earnings strings of at least 20 quarters since 1962, and show that this frequency is much larger than would be expected by chance....

We provide evidence suggesting that managers use financial statement misstatements which improve reported results to facilitate acquisitions. Specifically, we find that firms misstating their financial statements are more likely to make stock-based acquisitions, but not cash-based acquisitions,...

Valuation theory, investment managers, financial analysts, and textbooks advocating horizontal financial statement analysis suggest that the change in earnings growth (earnings acceleration) conveys value relevant information. We test this assertion using a large sample of U.S. firms. Results...

In this study, we explore the association between company reputation and the likelihood of a financial statement restatement (i.e., a revealed misstatement). We focus on restatements because they are one of the most visible forms of impaired financial reporting quality, and we suggest that...

This paper draws on two distinct literatures ndash; one that investigates the impact of accounting restatements and another that investigates the trading behavior of short sellers ndash; to further our understanding of how sophisticated investors process and respond to news about accounting...

We examine changes in the association between auditor type (Big 4, Second-Tier, and Other non-Big 4) and perceived financial reporting credibility in the wake of events (e.g., Andersen's failure, the implementation of SOX, creation of the PCAOB, etc.) which led to significant growth in...

In this paper, we study a sample of companies that fail to remediate previously-disclosed material weaknesses (MWs) in their internal control systems and thus disclose the same MWs in two consecutive annual reports. Their failure to remediate is surprising given that regulators, credit rating...

Studying the determinants of management forecast precision is important because a better understanding of the factors affecting management’s choice of forecast precision can provide investors and other users with cues about the characteristics of the information contained in the forecasts. In...