In 1914, an accounting professor named Arthur Andersen founded a public accounting practice that became the world’s largest professional-services firm. For years preceding the Enron debacle and Andersen’s collapse, the firm had struggled to create incentives within the organization for...

Two streams of agency theory research have focused on different aspects of the contracting relationship between shareholders and CEOs. The first stream of agency theory research examines the role of multiple performance measures in a CEOs compensation contract in maximizing firm value in a...

As critical components of infrastructure management systems, after enforcement of the Government Accounting Standards Boards statement 34 (GASB 34), development of a valuation approach and optimal rehabilitation and replacement polices (R&R policies) for infrastructure assets become overriding...

This thesis examines the association between insider trade behavior and participation within Rule 10b5-1 trade plans to provide evidence about how insiders respond to regulation that reduces litigation risk and how the Rule affects insiders informed trade profits. Rule 10b5-1 includes a safe...

Managers have the ability to time the disclosure of the non-cash component of earnings, which, is termed accrual information, to outside investors. They have the choice of disclosing accrual information at the earnings announcement or waiting until the filing date. This thesis examines whether...

In the first essay, we study the following question: If the provision of public good is financed by property (wealth or endowment) taxes,what is the optimal tax mechanism when agents have private information about his own endowment?Employing the state-dependent implementation model, under...