We examine the associations between the cost of equity capital and two audit committee characteristics: 1) average audit committee members' age; and 2) average number of audit committee members' other directorships. The study is motivated by the recent emphasis on the important role of audit...

The main objective of this study was to analyze the pattern of accounting events that signals error in audited financial statements and resulted in restatement in Brazil during the periods of 2000-2009. The study which is characterized as interpretative, borrows a leaf from the contexts studied...

We use data from China to examine whether regulations that limit management influence over auditors improve audit quality. China's State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council (SASAC) issued two rules in 2004 aimed at improving audit quality for state-owned...

This paper puts under the magnifying glass the path to failure of Sunbeam Corp. and emphasizes the reasons of its singularity and exceptionality. This corporate case emerges as an outlier from the analysis of the US fraud cases mentioned by WebBRD: the consideration of the time between fraud...

Financial accounting is an information conveyance process. When financial auditors issue an opinion in regard to financial statements, the auditors are providing assurance that those financial statements fairly represent the entity, and are prepared in accordance with the relevant standards. If...

We examine the association between country-level government quality and firms' choice of external auditors. Using a cross-sectional sample of 142,193 firm-year observations from 46 countries over 1998-2007, we show that the government quality of a country has a significant positive effect on the...

We examine the association between country-level government quality and firms' choice of external auditors. We use a firm's choice of a Big 4 auditor as a proxy for the demand for high-quality financial reporting. Using a cross-sectional sample of 142,193 firm-year observations from 46 countries...

In this study, we examine whether the monetary incentives associated with equity ownership (broadly defined to include stock and stock options) induce managers to maintain strong internal controls. Supporting the notion that equity ownership provides management incentive to strengthen the...

This paper presents a statistical analysis confirming the former empirical findings that positive differences between the growth rates of P-Score and Z-score appears in financial statement data of companies involved in major financial fraud. The paper examines firms that engaged in fraud in the...

Like all administrative agencies, the Internal Revenue Service is given a fair amount of authority to enforce the laws enacted by Congress. Taxpayers often question the amount of authority granted to the Internal Revenue Service, and whether such authority is abused. In some situations this...