This study examines how emphasis framing in narrative disclosures, and the investor characteristics numeracy and persuadability, affect investors' ability to discriminate between firms' better and worse financial performance. In an experiment with 264 participants from the general population, we...

We conduct a post-implementation research analysis of AS4, a standard guiding voluntary audits of material weakness (MW) remediation disclosures, to understand the reasons for the scarcity of AS4 audits in practice. We use multiple methods (experiments, comment letter analysis, and surveys) to...

We conduct a post-implementation research analysis of AS4, a standard guiding voluntary audits of material weakness (MW) remediation disclosures, to understand the reasons for the scarcity of AS4 audits in practice. We use multiple methods (experiments, comment letter analysis, and surveys) to...

Auditing standards task auditors with collecting sufficient appropriate evidence to form audit judgments. Yet cognitive psychology documents a robust finding in which people evaluate a bundle of relevant, directionally consistent evidence as though averaging the strength of the components. In...

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sanctioned investor-paid rating agency Egan-Jones for falsely stating that it did not know its clients' investment positions. The SEC's action against Egan-Jones raises the broad question whether knowledge of clients' investment positions creates a...

National office consultations (NOCs) are a mechanism intended to enhance audit quality, consistent with the logic of professionalism inherent in the audit profession. Yet, research indicates that the competing logic of commercialism has become institutionalized in audit firms. We examine how the...

Auditing standards task auditors with collecting sufficient appropriate evidence to form audit judgments. Yet cognitive psychology documents a robust finding in which people evaluate a bundle of relevant, directionally consistent evidence as though averaging the strength of the components. In...