There has been a net propensity over the last decade for the dominant rating agency of the U.S. insurance industry, A.M. Best, to downgrade property-liability insurers. This could reflect a general deteriorating credit worthiness of the industry or an increase in the performance thresholds...

Financial institutions have been at the forefront of the debate on the controversial shift in international standards from historical cost accounting to mark-to-market accounting. We show that the trade-offs at stake in this debate are far from one-sided. While the historical cost regime leads...

Accounting policy choices by financial intermediaries is a credible signal of their reputation to customers within a financial institution and is endogenous with their marginal fee structure. Various demand-side determinants of accounting policy choice (fpension fund agency costs) and...

The purpose of this paper is to provide a descriptive analysis of companies' previously uncorrected financial statement misstatements using disclosures recently mandated by Staff Accounting Bulletin No. 108 (SAB 108). We analyze 355 companies that disclose and correct 792 misstatements in their...

This paper examines whether legal liability coverage, as measured by excess directors' and officers' (Damp;O) liability insurance coverage and excess cash for indemnification, is associated with the quantity and the quality of a firm's voluntary disclosures. Using Canadian firms whose Damp;O...

This study proposes and tests a series of related hypotheses concerning the impacts of institutions' monitoring on managers' investing financing operating activities as well as accounting and reporting the outcomes of such activities. In developing and testing the hypotheses, the study...

We develop a new method of assessing conditional conservatism using more detailed data available from the insurance industry. We look at how conditional conservatism affects insolvency risk and the financial strength rating of property-liability (P&L) insurance companies. We also investigate how...

We examine the effect of directors' and officers' liability insurance (D&O insurance) on the behavior of independent directors and the effectiveness of their governance role. Using a unique dataset, we find a negative relation between D&O insurance and personal board meeting attendance by...

Appointed actuaries are responsible for estimating the largest liability on property-casualty insurance companies' balance sheet. Actuarial independence is crucial in safeguarding accurate estimates, where this independence is self-regulated by actuarial professional institutions. However,...