We hypothesize that one way accounting practices spread is through law firm connections. We investigate this prediction by examining companies that avoided reporting compensation expense by engaging in stock option backdating. We hypothesize that executives engaged in backdating because they...

Our study examines the circumstances of non-GAAP financial reporting by 492 U.S. companies that announced restatements from 1995 to 1999. We analyze the occurrence and resolution of litigation over restatements; and, we explore the role of accounting items in bringing and resolving this...

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) proscribes so-called “affiliated hires” of financial executives. More specifically, SOX requires that firms wait at least one year before hiring an individual recently employed as a member of the firm’s external audit team. The intent of the regulation...

This study examines whether audit committee and board characteristics are related to earnings management by the firm. A negative relation is found between audit committee independence and abnormal accruals. A negative relation is also found between board independence and abnormal accruals....

Prior literature suggests a positive relationship between financial reporting quality and the presence of accounting experts on audit committees. This study investigates the association between accruals quality and the characteristics of accounting experts and mix of accounting and...

Recent studies and some policy experts have posited that dividends indicate higher quality earnings. In this study, we test this conjecture by comparing the dividend policies of firms accused of accounting fraud to those of firms not accused of accounting fraud. Specifically, we examine whether...

This paper examines why CFOs become involved in material accounting manipulations. We find that while CFOs bear substantial legal costs when involved in accounting manipulations, these CFOs have similar equity incentives to the CFOs of matched non-manipulation firms. In contrast, CEOs of...

Events leading up to the implementation of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) increased the public's focus on corporate governance and increased regulatory scrutiny of corporate governance mechanisms. These events also contributed to a massive restructuring in the audit market which resulted...

This paper introduces a cross-country law and finance analysis of the misreporting behavior in the hedge fund industry in terms of smoothing returns so that a fund consistently generates positive returns. We find strong evidence that international differences in hedge fund regulation are...

Managers exercise considerable discretion over how they announce an accounting restatement in a press release. Some firms issue a press release that discloses the restatement in the headline (high prominence). Others provide a press release with a headline on a different subject (for example,...