The literature of financial economics documents a causal relationship between the level of information asymmetry in the firm and its dividend policy. The agency theory and the pecking order theory show that the problem of cash over-retention inside the firm exacerbates in the presence of high...

This study examines the effect of the passing of Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) of 2002 as well as managerial entrenchment characteristics of corporations on the value-relevance of earnings. Our sample of observations is partitioned into three sub-periods: the Pre-Scandal (Pre-SCA) period, the Enron...

We study the relationship between employee satisfaction and stock returns across 30 countries. Employee satisfaction is associated with superior long-run returns in flexible labor markets, such as the US and UK, but not rigid labor markets, such as Germany. Similar results hold for current...

We study the impact of profit uncertainty on investment and whether or not this response is different in industries that are dominated by small firms versus those that are dominated by relatively larger firms. Our key findings are that the sign of the investment-uncertainty relationship is...

We interview 24 very experienced auditors about how they audit complex accounting estimates such as fair values and impairments and what problems they experience in the process. We find that auditors overwhelmingly choose to audit the details of management's estimate rather than use other...

Previous studies examining the relation between the audit opinion and auditor switching assume a one-way causation, with the issuance of a qualified opinion triggering a switch. However, analytical studies dealing with auditor independence issues (e.g., Magee and Tseng, 1990; Dye, 1991; Teoh, 1992)...

In this research note we report on our current efforts on developing a leading indicator of housing prices that could be used to forecast housing prices. Specifically we use Google search index at city level to predict Case-Shiller index. The methodology is based on Granger causality where we...