Prior research provides evidence that financial-statement users weight information less heavily in judgment when that information is provided in a less accessible format (e.g., information disclosed in a footnote or less important financial statement rather than being recognized on the income...

Separation of ownership and control in firms creates information asymmetry problems between shareholders and managers that expose shareholders to a variety of agency risks. This paper investigates the extent to which governance attributes that are intended to mitigate agency risk affect firms'...

We study the behavior of short sellers around earnings restatements. We find that short sellers accumulate positions in restating firms several months in advance of the restatement and subsequently unwind these positions after the drop in share price induced by the restatement. The increase in...

I investigate the demand for and benefits of private company audits. Agency theory predicts audits are demanded as a monitoring mechanism. I consider two sources of this demand - external stakeholders and management - and related benefits. First, audits may be used to reduce agency costs...

We examine the relation between auditor characteristics (quality and tenure) and the cost of debt financing. Consistent with the hypothesis that audit characteristics are important to the capital markets, we find that (i) auditor quality and tenure are negatively and significantly related to the...

We examine the relation between the information content of earnings (earnings response coefficients) and board and audit committee structure for a broad sample of more than 1,200 firms during 2001. We find that earnings are more informative the greater is the independence and the activity of the...

In this paper we investigate the incremental information content of a sample of 1751 quarterly financial reports, issued in Portugal between 1994 and 2004. Specifically, we examine price and volume reactions to financial reports issued in: (1) the first and third quarters, which are unaudited; (2)...

Enterprise risk management (ERM) is the process of analyzing the portfolio of risks facing the enterprise to ensure that the combined effect of such risks is within an acceptable tolerance. While more firms are adopting ERM, little academic research exists about the costs and benefits of ERM....

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) mandates management evaluation and independent audits of internal control effectiveness. The mandate is costly to firms but may yield benefits through lower information risk that translates into lower cost of equity. We use unaudited pre-SOX 404 disclosures and SOX...

By convention, the quality of an audit is understood to relate to the joint probability that its conduct results in the detection and reporting of material financial statement errors. Early research into this phenomenon suggested a positive relationship between audit firm size and audit quality....