We argue that the association between abnormal returns and expected managerial performance of target firms reveals alternative motives behind acquisitions. We test for the disciplinary motive by regressing abnormal returns against the earnings forecast revisions of target firms. A negative slope...

This study provides evidence on whether auditor independence-in-appearance, proxied by earnings response coefficients, is related to the non-audit fee ratio (non-audit to total fees from a client) or client importance (total fees from a client as a percentage of the total revenues of the audit...