International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) allow firms to record adjustments (gains or losses) from the revaluation of investment properties in their income statements. After Hong Kong adopted IFRS in 2005, property companies were required to move their revaluation gains and losses (RGL)...

To deter financial misstatements, many companies have recently adopted compensation recovery policies – commonly known as “clawbacks” – that authorize the board to recoup compensation paid to executives based on misstated financial reports. Clawbacks have been shown to reduce financial...

From 1996 to 1998, listed companies in China were required to achieve a minimum return on equity (ROE) of 10 percent in each of the previous three years before they could apply for permission to issue additional shares. As a result of this rule, there was a heavy concentration of ROEs in the...

In contrast to research showing that private litigation discourages audit clients from disclosing internal control weaknesses, we find that auditors' litigation concerns have a countervailing effect. Our empirical results show that adverse internal control opinions reduces the likelihood of...

This paper examines whether and how auditors are disciplined for audit errors. Taking advantage of the long history of auditor identity data from China, we find that signing auditors with client restatements are likely to lose the privilege of signing the audit reports of public clients....

This study examines analyst forecast revisions after the disclosure of firms' deferred tax adjustments following the U.S. Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 (OBRA), which raised the corporate income tax rate from 34% to 35%. This deferred tax adjustment was a one-time item, and should...

In China, listed companies are required to achieve a minimum return on equity (ROE) before they can apply for permission to issue additional shares through seasoned-equity offerings (SEO). We document two benefits of this accounting-based regulation in China. First, this regulation limits the...

While firm-initiated compensation recovery (or clawback) provisions are gaining popularity and the recently enacted Dodd-Frank Act seeks to make the clawback of erroneously awarded compensation mandatory for all listed companies, little is known about their effectiveness. We find that the...