We examine the relation between the relative amount of fees paid to auditors for non-audit services and the behavior of accrual measures. We extend prior research in two important directions. First, using a pooled sample of 2,295 firms for the fiscal year 2000, we find very little evidence of a...

We add to the literature on mandatory auditor rotation by examining the Florida government audit environment in which there exist both rotation and non-rotation regimes and in which there exists an independent measure of the joint quality of the audit and of the financial statements of the...

We examine Enron's collapse to provide insights as to the efficacy of recent governance reforms. In doing so, we explore two main issues. First, if recently mandated governance changes had been in place earlier, would they have constrained actions by Enron's management? Second, and more...

Since the revelation of accounting scandals at Enron, Worldcom, and several other high profile companies (quot;Enron et al.quot;) five years ago, there has been unprecedented public focus on U.S. corporate governance. A common view, articulated by many journalists, politicians, and public...

This paper explores directly the effect of internal control weakness (hereafter ICW) and their remediation on information precision for firms who filed Section 404 reports with the SEC. Our proxies for information precision are drawn from Barron et al. (1998). First, we find that the presence of...

This study investigates whether having a Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404 [SOX 404] material weakness allows managers of these firms to manipulate earnings to a greater extent using discretionary accruals than managers of firms with no SOX 404 material weaknesses. The study focuses on a sample of 218...

Internal auditors often perform work that is relevant to their host entities' financial reporting processes, yet little research attention has focused on the effects of internal auditing on companies' external financial reporting. Using a unique and previously unavailable data set, we...

We examine whether firms with managers that have prior internal audit experience are less likely to manage earnings. We find that firms with managers that have internal audit experience are associated with less overall earnings management, driven by lower real earnings management. Importantly,...

This study provides evidence concerning the significance of assessing operational control risks as part of an integrative evaluation of internal controls. We examine whether operational control weaknesses can be used as cues to potential unreported financial reporting control weaknesses, and in...

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) prohibits companies from outsourcing internal audit work to their external audit provider. Competing predictions on the effects of this prohibition stem from two academic arguments relating to the provision of nonaudit services by the external auditor: knowledge...