After decades of de-prioritizing shareholders' economic interests and low corporate profitability, Japan introduced the JPX-Nikkei400 in 2014. The index highlighted the country's “best-run" companies by annually selecting the 400 most profitable of its large and liquid firms. We find that...

In August 2007 the United Kingdom experienced its first bank run in over 140 years. Although Northern Rock was not a particularly large bank (it was at the time ranked 7th in terms of assets) it was nevertheless a significant retail bank and a substantial mortgage lender. In fact, ten years...

We examine the associations between the cost of equity capital and two audit committee characteristics: 1) average audit committee members' age; and 2) average number of audit committee members' other directorships. The study is motivated by the recent emphasis on the important role of audit...

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) is enacted to strengthen corporate governance practices by enhancing the power of audit committee. After 2002, audit committee has received increasing emphasis in accounting research. The objective of this study is to review the growing volume of audit committee...

The role of the audit committee and the internal audit function in corporate governance has grown in recent years. In that context, the audit literature and practice has underlined the increasingly important role of support and interaction between the audit committee and the internal audit with...

Recent trends in corporate board composition indicate an increase in the appointment of directors with legal expertise. Using two financial reporting quality measures, accruals quality and discretionary accruals, we find – for a sample of Russell 1000 firms in 2003 and 2005 – that the...