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...

We investigate whether financial reporting quality facilitates economic growth. Our hypothesis is that better reporting quality improves project identification and selection, and lowers the cost of capital, translating into faster growth. Based on the premise that information uncertainty...

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...

We examine how the transition from local GAAPs to IAS/IFRS of companies that are publicly traded on a European stock exchange affects earnings management. To measure earnings management we apply 15 different proxies. In analyzing 17 European countries and more than 18,000 firm-year observations...

This study examines whether outside directors factor in litigation costs for the firm while monitoring optimal disclosure policy. It investigates the association of management earnings forecast disclosure and the proportion of outside directors across two regimes with unequal litigation costs -...

The social and economic development of a country is dependent on the efficient use, conservation, and protection of natural resources. Today, we are in a globalised era, and India is one of the fastest-growing economies across the globe, so there is more utilisation of natural resources. It is a...

Public hospitals in the U.K. apply GAAP as modified by the Treasury, the Financial Reporting Advisory Board (FRAB) and the Department of Health. Individual National Health Service (NHS) Trusts apply their interpretation of the accounting manuals with further guidance and scrutiny from oversight...

This study hypothesizes and tests whether the degrees to which managers exercise earnings discretion relates to their value system (i.e., culture) as well as the institutional features (i.e., legal environment) of their country. We find that uncertainty avoidance and individualism dimensions of...

This paper extends the traditional view of audit failures related to the going-concern (GC) assumption to two circumstances scarcely analyzed in the audit literature: the earnings overstatement that characterizes firms without a going-concern uncertainty (GCU) in their audit reports and the...