We document that the initiation of audit committee interlocks is associated with contagion in reported special items. We argue that this is, in part, attributable to contagion of accounting policy choices. We find that the special items of newly interlocked firms, unrelated before interlock,...

Previous literature on earnings management has examined the maintained hypothesis that firms barely beating earnings benchmarks are earnings manipulators with earnings before accounting manipulation otherwise slightly below their benchmarks and has implemented research designs that treat all...

In this paper we set forth a robust and generalized research design for investigating potential EM and other firm behaviors hypothesized to deviate from some expected value. The design is robust in that it relies only on conservative rank-based variables and utilizes binomial test statistics, in...

We examine the governance transfer effect of corporate blockholders in a sample of 892 block acquisitions across 42 countries from 1990 to 2008. Using earnings management as a proxy for corporate governance outcome, we find that target firms' earnings management is aligned with that of block...

Institutional investors, policy makers, and researchers have advocated for greater director independence in hopes of improving corporate governance and discouraging unethical behaviors such as corporate frauds, accounting irregularities, and other organizational failures. However, increasing...