We examine the consequences for the stock price movement of Andersen's German clients of several news events during the Enron crisis that were potentially damaging to the reputation of Enron's auditor Andersen. It seems to be likely that there may not only have been reputation-damaging effects...

When annual earnings are regressed on annual returns, the returns coefficient is higher when returns are negative. The difference between the coefficients of earnings on positive and negative returns is called asymmetric timeliness of earnings and, in the accounting literature, is used...

Two standard setting approaches have emerged globally to guide the choice of accounting for securitizations: the control and components approach (FAS125/FAS140) and the risks and rewards transfer approach (IAS39). A lack of consensus about derecognition accounting is a major impediment to...

In this paper we empirically evaluate the widespread belief of managers that income smoothing results into lower stock market risk. Multivariate regressions confirm that a negative relation exists between discretionary income smoothing and idiosyncratic volatility. Further analysis indicates...

The financial crisis that occurred in Malaysia in the last decade followed by a series of corporate restructuring exercises trigger some firms to write off assets value. The incentives to write off may come from signalling future distress, current restructuring exercises, or taking the...

This paper investigates the development of earnings quality for a sample of 5,817 firm years during the period between 1997 and 2006 using seven different measures (accounting- and market-based). As a result, overall earnings quality of German firms improves over time. However, the measures of...

Doubts about the reliability of a company's qualitative financial disclosure increase market participant expectations from the auditor's report. The auditing process is supposed to serve as a monitoring device that reduces management incentives to manipulate reported earnings. Empirical research...

In the context of the statutory tax rate reductions enacted in the Tax Reform Act of 1986, this paper investigates the degree to which capital market participants anticipate and correctly interpret temporary income effects of tax-motivated income shifting. We find evidence consistent with...

I investigate the role of book-tax differences in indicating the persistence of earnings, accruals, and cash flows for one-period-ahead earnings. I also examine whether the level of book-tax differences influences investors' assessments of future earnings persistence. I find that firm-years with...

In this paper we conjecture that the weak association between disclosure and cost of equity capital found in the literature (Botosan, 1997) can be caused by the high level corporate disclosure environment found in the US. We hypothesize that in low level corporate disclosure environments the...