The purpose of this study is to investigate whether firms' auditor choice relates to national culture. We construct a novel measure of secretiveness based on Hofstede's (1980) cultural factors. Using a very large sample of firms from 37 countries and controlling for a number of firm- and...

<heading id="h1" level="1" implicit="yes" format="display">ABSTRACT</heading>This study tests the agency cost hypothesis in the context of geographic earnings disclosures. The agency cost hypothesis predicts that managers, when not monitored by shareholders, make self-maximizing decisions that may not necessarily be in the best interest of shareholders. These...

We investigate the effects of the introduction of Statement of Financial Accounting Standards No. 131 (SFAS 131) on the market's valuation of foreign earnings. <link rid="b61">Thomas (1999)</link> documents that investors discount the value of foreign earnings for US multinational companies. He conjectures but does...

We are interested in understanding how agency conflicts in private firms arise through ownership structures and family relationships. Specifically, we analyze auditors’ increase of effort and firms’ choice of auditors in situations with higher level of agency conflicts. For a large sample of...