The governance of infrastructure institutions in the financial markets – namely exchanges, central counter-parties (CCPs), and central securities depositories (CSDs) – has become a matter of significant commercial, regulatory, legislative, and even political concern. Such institutions play a...

We propose and find that enhanced regulatory transparency facilitates alignment between private and public enforcement. Utilizing the SEC's 2004 decision to publicly disclose its comment letters, we explore the actions of a public enforcer (the SEC) and a private enforcer (shareholder...

This study examines the costs and benefits of uniform accounting regulation in the presence of heterogeneous firms who can lobby the regulator. A commitment to uniform regulation reduces economic distortions caused by lobbying by creating a free-rider problem between lobbying firms at the cost...

This paper examines economic consequences of a 2006 Securities and Exchange Commission regulation that mandated public firms to disclose their governance policies on related-party transactions (hereafter RPTs). Employing hand-collected RPT data for S&P 1500 firms, we find that the initiation of...

This study was prepared by Andreas Kuhlmann, while he was working with the Ifo Institute for Economic Research. It was completed in September 2006 and was accepted as a Ph.D. thesis by the Economics Department of the University of Munich. The subject of this study is the analysis of network...

This paper adds to the literatures on socially responsible investment (SRI), investment management, regulation of financial services and social accounting by providing a comprehensive survey of investment methods used in SRI products and regulated social reporting in financial services....

Both in US common law or in French codified law, Forensic Accountants aim to serve justice by illuminating technical, financial facts in the context of a dispute or a trial.According to the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), Forensic accounting services..."generally...

We examine changes in fees paid to auditors around the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX, 2002). Audit fees are expected to increase after SOX due to both increased audit effort and potentially increased auditors' legal liability. Our results indicate an economically large increase in audit fees following...

In this paper we examine a setting where agents can form lobbying coalitions to influence a policy-maker. Policy uniformity causes agents to free ride on each other's lobbying and gives them an incentive to form lobbying coalitions. We investigate when coalitions are formed by similar or...