On November 14th, 2014, SUERF – The European Money and Finance Forum – and CNMV, Comisión Nacional del Mercado de Valores – the Spanish Authority for supervision of securities markets – jointly organized a conference in Madrid: Challenges in Securities Markets Regulation: Investor...

This article takes a look at the major accounting policies pertinent to risk management functions of banks internationally and in India. It benchmarks the Indian policies against those internationally on three parameters. It finds wide divergence in policies in Indian banks versus...

The authors analyze commercial banks' profitability (return on equity, ROE) at different levels of creditor rights and an aggregate score of information sharing in terms of credit bureaus. After controlling for bank size and some macroeconomic variables, the results indicate that profitability...

This paper examines whether institutional characteristics distinguishing Islamic from conventional banks lead to distinctive capital and earnings management behavior through the use of loan loss provisions. In our sample countries, the two banking sectors operate under different regulatory...

This paper provides an overview of current government schemes promoting corporate reporting of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and analyses their main building blocks. It describes the drivers and challenges for governments, companies and investors in dealing with GHG reporting and includes 4...

This study investigates the determinants of firms' decision to impair goodwill under IFRS. Our empirical analysis is based on data for the years 2005 to 2011 for 8,110 non-financial firm-years and 1,358 financial firm-years from 21 countries where firms apply IFRS. We specifically investigate...

Since the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was enacted in U.S., there has been a general tendency to globally harmonize regulations and practices of board governance. The purpose of this study is to compare among countries how well the board of directors constrains earnings management. Using a sample of firms...

This paper investigates how political and legal institutions affect the governance role of auditors for a sample of firms originating in 42 countries. Prior studies focus on investor protection, but I focus on political rights as well. Specifically, I investigate how institutions and audit...

Shareholder activism on sustainability issues has become increasingly prevalent over the years, with the number of proposals filed doubling from 1999 to 2013. We use recent innovations in accounting standard setting to classify 2,665 shareholder proposals that address environmental and social...