This paper examines how capital market pressures and institutional factors shape firms' incentives to report earnings that reflect economic performance. To isolate the effects of reporting incentives, we exploit the fact that, within the European Union, privately held corporations face the same...

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...

This paper reviews research regarding the role of financial analysts in capital markets. The paper builds on the perspectives provided by Schipper (1991) and Brown (1993). We categorize papers published mainly since 1992 and selectively discuss aspects of these papers that address or suggest key...

Market regulators, commissions and accountancy bodies have recommended the establishment of audit committees as an important step in improving corporate governance. In 2002 the Kenya Capital Markets Authority required all listed companies to establish audit committees. This study examined the...

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...

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether firms' auditor choice relates to national culture. We construct a novel measure of secretiveness based on Hofstede's (1980) cultural factors. Using a very large sample of firms from 37 countries and controlling for a number of firm- and...

This study examines how five financial reporting and disclosure quality proxies are related to emerging markets (EM) firms' cross-listing choices and their access to the global capital market. Our five financial reporting and disclosure quality proxies are transparency of the annual report,...

Ball Robin and Wu (2003) investigate the relationship between accounting standards and the structure of other institutions on the attributes of the financial reporting system. They find evidence consistent with the hypothesis that beyond accounting standards, the structure of other institutions,...

I discuss the analysis in Piotroski and Srinivasan (2008) and how it helps to disentangle the effects of Sarbanes Oxley on observed listing patterns. Since the paper is quite thorough and reflects the comments from many workshop participants, I focus on broader issues. Further, I attempt to...

Kim and Shi (this issue) document that voluntary IFRS adoption is associated with significant benefits and argue that the effect is causal – a conclusion that is similar to many published papers on IFRS adoption. Yet voluntary IFRS adopters constitute only a small percentage of the global...