We examine the equity market reaction to events associated with the passage of a directive in the European Union (EU) mandating increased nonfinancial disclosure. These disclosures relate to firms' environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance, and would be applicable to firms listed...

In the wake of the recent financial meltdown, financial reporting under both North American generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) and international financial reporting standards (IFRS) has involved renewed attention to the structures and constraints of “mark-to-market” and similar...

This paper compares technical aspects of accrual-based budgeting and accounting reforms of the national governments of France, Germany, the UK and the US. It shows that there is no consensus among the four countries about the complete package of technical reform possibilities that is most...

While Italy's catch-up in the course of the 20th century has been nothing short of extraordinary, it has failed to produce a large number of global business players. Nonetheless, half a century ago an Italian company concluded what was at the time the largest-ever foreign takeover of a US...

We study the effect of mandatory IFRS adoption in Europe in 2005 on conditional conservatism. We capture conditional conservatism with a modified version of the Khan and Watts (2009) measure (C_Score) that also controls for potential shifts in unconditional conservatism and cost of capital. From...

This study examines how disclosures impact lawyers' perceptions of independent auditors being sued for failure to detect fraud; specifically whether the auditor's opinion and disclosures required by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 may be deemed to be red flags and deter litigation. A 3x1...

This paper investigates whether the well-documented asset growth effect on stock returns exists across both profit and loss firms in European capital markets. We find that the asset growth anomaly is more pronounced across loss firms and is significantly dampened by the inclusion of profit firms...

We examine changes in stock price informativeness following the European Union's Transparency Directive (TPD). The TPD, implemented by country between 2007 and 2009, enhanced corporate transparency through mandating regular firm financial disclosures and the dissemination of financial reports....

Internal audit (IA) is theoretically considered a key element of modern corporate governance. Surprisingly, the existing knowledge on IA and its relation to the internal corporate governance structure is miscellaneous and rare. Consequently, empirical findings on the internal audit function...

The objective of this study was to determine if the securities regulation in a foreign country is related to the earnings quality of European firms cross-listed in Europe. The study compared the post-listing earnings quality of 112 European firms cross-listed in 13 European stock exchanges...