We examine the impact of China's anti-corruption campaign on firm-level financial reporting quality (FRQ). As an important component of the anti-corruption campaign, in October 2013, “Rule 18” was issued to prohibit party and government officials from serving as directors for publicly listed...

Firms often change their operating policy to meet a short-term financial reporting target. Accounting researchers call such an opportunistic action real earnings management (REM). They measure REM by the difference between a firm's costs and those reported by its industry peers. Firms that...

I examine whether political influence as a response to voters' interest in employment levels is reflected in the enforcement actions of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). I find that large employers are less likely to experience SEC enforcement actions. Next, I examine whether...

We revisit evidence whether incentives or IFRS drive earnings quality changes, analyzing a large sample of German firms in the period from 1998 to 2008. Consistent with previous studies we find that voluntary and mandatory adopters differ distinctively in terms of essential firm characteristics...

This study examines how key market participants — managers and analysts — responded to SFAS 123R's controversial requirement that firms recognize stock-based compensation expense. Despite mandated recognition of the expense, some firms' managers exclude it from pro forma earnings and some...

Mispricing and risk have both been suggested as explanations for the cross-sectional relation between stock returns and firm characteristics such as accruals. As emphasized by Ferson and Harvey (1998) and Berk, Green and Naik (1999), it is difficult to evaluate these competing explanations...

Activist short-sellers could play an information role in capital markets by disclosing informative short-theses, or, as many are concerned, a manipulation role by spreading misinformation. To shed light on this controversy, this paper focuses on a powerful setting where both roles are heightened...

We examine the effect of auditor conservatism on corporate innovation. We hypothesize that because conservative auditors constrain income-increasing accounting discretion, managers may sacrifice long-term investments in innovation to boost current earnings and meet short-term performance...

This paper provides early but broad empirical evidence on a major new investor protection regulation in Europe, MiFID II, which requires investment firms to unbundle investment research from other costs they charge to clients. We predict that the price separation resulting from unbundling and a...

We examine the relation between corporate cash holdings and tax net operating loss carryforwards (NOLs). Prior literature demonstrates that firms should distribute cash to shareholders, rather than retain the cash and generate passive investment income taxed at both corporate and investor...