A premise of standard setters and of much empirical research is that improving the quality of accounting standards and their implementation increases information in capital markets. This paper challenges this premise and shows that there are situations in which “better”, i.e., more...

The paper considers two major economic effects created by the Internet for financial accounting and disclosure. First, the Internet changes the costs of information processes and with it the demand and supply of financial information in capital markets. Second, Internet financial reporting...

This paper examines how the characteristics of accounting systems and management incentives interact and collectively determine financial reporting quality. We develop a rational expectations equilibrium model that features a steady-state firm with investments, financial and non-financial...

This paper studies strategic interactions between public and private enforcement of accounting regulation and their consequences for the deterrence of financial misreporting. We develop an economic model with a manager, a public enforcement agency, and an investor and derive equilibrium...

A widely held assumption in policy making and empirical research is that increasing the strength of public enforcement improves financial reporting quality and audit quality. This paper provides a more nuanced view. In a model with a manager who can manage earnings, a strategic auditor, and an...

To protect investors, regulators increasingly rely on regulating firms' internal controls over financial reporting, but they punish noncompliance only if an internal control weakness enabled accounting manipulation. In other words, enforcement is manipulation-contingent. We develop an economic...

We develop an economic theory on the endogenous relationship between corporate disclosure and shareholder litigation and derive three key results. (i) Decreasing litigation risk can lead to more or less disclosure due a trade-off between the deterrence and the insurance effects of litigation....