We examine whether firms engage in less income-increasing earnings management following the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the resulting requirement by the SEC that financial statements be certified by firms' CEOs and CFOs. Unlike other research on this topic that examines US firms, we focus on Canadian...

This study examines the relationship between disclosure quality and earnings management. Corporate disclosure and earnings management are both subject to managers' discretion; therefore, managers are likely to consider their interaction when exercising managerial discretion. This study employs a...

In this paper we investigate the relation between audit committee quality, auditor independence, and the disclosure of internal control weaknesses after the enactment of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. We begin with a sample of firms with internal control weaknesses and, based on industry, size, and...

We examine whether auditor-provided tax consulting services are associated with tax and non-tax internal control material weaknesses consistent with knowledge spillover benefits. We find a positive association between the amounts of consulting fees paid, which should proxy for the scale and/or...

In this paper, we study a comprehensive sample of Andersen clients and investigate whether the deterioration of Andersen's reputation after its criminal indictment on March 14, 2002 adversely impacted the perceived credibility of their audit quality. Since these reputational concerns are more of...

On June 27, 2002, the SEC ordered the CEOs and CFOs of public companies with revenues during their last fiscal year of greater than $1.2 billion to file written statements, under oath, regarding the accuracy of their companies' financial statements. The SEC's order required the sworn statements...

Fudenberg and Tirole (1995) analytically demonstrate that income smoothing can arise in equilibrium if managers are concerned about job security. Consistent with their model, DeFond and Park (1997) show that managers smooth income in consideration of both current and future relative performance....

Earnings management is a corporate decision subject to costs. Both earnings management in the IPO process and the ex ante delisting risk of newly issued firms are related to firm fundamentals. With a sample of IPOs from 1980 to 1999, we find that the degree of earnings management possesses...

We examine the effect of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) on the extent of aggressive/conservative reporting behavior of public companies. SOX imposes considerably greater potential penalties on CEO/CFOs who engage in financial wrongdoing; therefore, risk averse managers are likely to report lower...