This study finds that the requirement of ASC 842 for firms to capitalize operating leases in financial statements beginning in 2019 resulted in firms affected by the standard reducing existing debt amounts on average between 7% and 10% relative to unaffected firms. We also find that firms with...

In this paper, we distil essential insights about the regulation of financial reporting from the academic literature. The key objective is to synthesize extant theory to provide a basis for evaluating implications of pressures on the regulation of financial accounting following the recent...