Machine learning offers empirical methods to sift through accounting data sets with a large number of variables and limited a priori knowledge about functional forms. In this study, we show that these methods help detect and interpret patterns present in ongoing accounting misstatements. We use...

How precise should accounting measurements be, if management has discretion to strategically withhold? We examine this question by nesting an optimal persuasion mechanism, which controls what measurements are conducted, within a voluntary disclosure framework a la Dye (85) and Jung and Kwon...