In this cross-border study, we document the usefulness of reported earnings as conditioned by varying levels of litigation risk. We focus on litigation risk, since Ball (2001) suggests that although litigation rights are seldom discussed in the context of international accounting, the threat of...

The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act (PSLRA) increases restrictions on private litigation for securities fraud. We examine stock price reactions on legislative-event-related days of firms in four high-litigation-risk industries. Two other studies on this issue, Spiess and Tkac (1997)...

This paper analyzes whether competition between stock exchanges for volume leads to a deterioration of disclosure requirements imposed by those exchanges on listing firms. The model shows that trading concentrates on the high disclosure exchange, prompting exchanges to engage in a quot;race for...

This paper develops a model to analyze the impact of shareholder litigation on managers' voluntary disclosure strategies in equity offerings. The major findings are as follows. First, under different economic parameters, the entrepreneur has two possible equilibrium disclosure strategies: full...

The U.S. hedge fund market is one of the largest and most sophisticated hedge fund markets in the world, yet due to U.S. securities regulation it is also one of the least accessible. In the U.S., federal securities law requires individuals to be wealthy to qualify to invest in hedge funds....

Financial reporting around the time of IPOs is consistent with listed firms reporting more conservatively than previously as private firms, consistent with the results in Ball and Shivakumar (2005). We hypothesize that IPO firms supply the higher quality financial reports demanded by public...

This paper provides evidence about the unintended consequences arising when small companies are exempted from costly regulations - these firms have incentives to stay small. Between 2003 and 2008, the SEC postponed compliance with Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) for...

This paper examines whether the likelihood of accounting restatements is associated with the Big 4 industry auditor specialists, measured at both the partnerndash;level and audit firm-level leadership. We focus on a sample of listed firms in Taiwan where audit reports must be audited and signed...