Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act requires managers to assess, and their auditors to express an opinion on, the effectiveness of internal controls over financial reporting (ICFR). Policymakers expect the ICFR audits to enhance the credibility of firms' financial statements. Prior research...

In the past six years, the average number of industries (2-digit SIC) serviced by audit offices in the United States has grown by 20% and the number of industries where the office has specialization has fallen by 40% (Data Source: Audit Analytics). This suggests a trend away from specialization...

Recent trends in corporate board composition indicate an increase in the appointment of directors with legal expertise. Using two financial reporting quality measures, accruals quality and discretionary accruals, we find – for a sample of Russell 1000 firms in 2003 and 2005 – that the...

In this paper, we examine the effect of economic policy uncertainty on reactions of capital market participants and the actions of corporate managers. In particular, we investigate two issues: 1) whether the economic policy uncertainty has a short-term and long-term impact on the interpretation...

We depict and analyze wealth mobility in a national sample of nearly 4,000 households interviewed by the National Longitudinal Survey over a ten year period from the mid 1960s to the mid 1970s. A transition matrix, the Shorrocks measure, average decile position for various subgroups, and wealth...

Using a set of unique databases from China, with employment history of auditors, details of audit engagement partners and financial reporting quality, we examine the performance of auditors that moved up to another higher-tier audit firm. We show that the audit quality of signing auditors with...