This study explores close U.S. congressional elections involving politicians who have influence over the SEC to examine the effect of firms’ political connections on their financial reporting. This question is important in understanding the overall effect of political connections on financial...

This study examines the effect of product market competition on managerial disclosure of earnings forecasts using large reductions in U.S. import tariff rates to identify an exogenous increase in competition for domestic firms in U.S. product markets. Our difference-in-difference estimations...

Prior research provides mixed evidence about whether sufficient audit market competition exists and whether competition impairs or improves audit quality. A major impediment to this stream of research is the unobservable nature of the bidding process by which auditors compete for clients. In...

We show that measures of business text sentiment are highly affected by transitory events. These transitory events lead to a strong positive association between sentiment and contemporaneous earnings. However, the association between sentiment and future earnings is insignificant. We develop a...

This study examines the role of media coverage on meritorious shareholder litigation. Asserting a causal effect of the media on litigation is normally difficult due to the endogenous nature of media coverage. However, we use the Wall Street Journal’s backdating coverage to overcome these...

Most accounting studies use only public enforcement actions (SEC cases) to measure accounting fraud. However, private cases (securities class actions) also play an important enforcement role. We discuss the legal standards and processes for both public and private enforcement regimes, emphasize...