Prior research finds that donors reward nonprofits that report larger program ratios with more donations and that managers overstate these ratios, ostensibly to attract donations. We examine how donors react to inflated ratios. We find that the average donor discounts ratios that are inflated by...

Nonprofit organizations operate taxable activities in two general ways: as unrelated businesses operated by the nonprofit or through controlled subsidiaries. Prior research and regulatory attention has focused on unrelated business activities, although taxable subsidiaries generate at least as...

All organizations, including charities, are vulnerable to the risk of losses due to fraud. Using a sample of 562 nonprofit organizations that report an asset diversion between 2008 and 2011, we examine whether fraud disclosures are relevant to donors' giving decisions. We find, all else equal,...

We examine whether donors reward nonprofit organizations with better governance. We obtain governance data from newly available disclosures on the IRS Form 990. For a sample of 10,846 organizations from 2008 to 2010, we first identify seven nonprofit governance dimensions using factor analysis....

This study investigates whether having a Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404 [SOX 404] material weakness allows managers of these firms to manipulate earnings to a greater extent using discretionary accruals than managers of firms with no SOX 404 material weaknesses. The study focuses on a sample of 218...

The Shenzhen Stock Exchange (SZSE) in China is unique worldwide in requiring disclosure of the timing, participants and selected content of private in-house meetings between firm managers and outside investors. We investigate whether these private meetings benefit hosting-firms and their major...

Chinese firms listing in the U.S. via reverse mergers (CRMs) have dominated prior media, regulator and research attention. Yet CRMs have effectively ceased, leaving Chinese firms listing via initial public offerings (CIPOs) as the relevant remaining class of Chinese firms listing on U.S....

At the beginning of the 1990s UK accounting standards were described as a ‘laughing stock’. By the millennium they were widely acclaimed and in some respects world-leading. This paper explores some of the key technical advances in this period, and the political processes employed to secure...

We examine the influence of normative and regulative institutional factors on cost shifting by nonprofit hospitals in their publicly reported statements. We explore whether normative constraints imposed by stakeholders, who prefer that nonprofit hospitals allocate their resources toward...

This paper examines how nonprofit organizations respond to incentives to manage their publicly available financial information. Prior research identifies two operating ratios donors commonly use to evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of nonprofits (i.e., the program service ratio, defined...