The main objectives of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 are to improve the accuracy and reliability of corporate disclosure. Under Section 404 of SOX, an auditor has to report an assessment of a firm's internal controls and attest to management's assessment of the firm's internal control. Material...

Purpose - This paper presents an initial evaluation of recent Irish legislation in the area of corporate governance. Design/methodology/approach - The background to the introduction of the 2001 Company Law Enforcement Act, establishing the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement (ODCE),...

We examine determinants of weaknesses in internal control for 779 firms disclosing material weaknesses from August 2002 to August 2005. We find that these firms tend to be smaller, younger, financially weaker, more complex, growing rapidly, or undergoing restructuring. Firms with more serious...

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...

Comprehensive regulatory changes brought on by recent corporate governance reforms have broadly redefined and re-emphasized the roles and responsibilities of all the participants in a public company's financial reporting process. Most notably, these reforms have intensified scrutiny of corporate...

This paper empirically examines whether certain corporate governance mechanisms are related to the probability of a company restating its earnings. We examine a sample of 159 U.S. public companies that restated earnings and an industry-size matched sample of control firms. We have assembled a...

The metrics of generally accepted accounting principles is undergoing a debate in the wake of the accounting and financial scandals that began with Enron. Central to this debate is whether GAAP has become too rule based and needs to become more focused on principles. Sarbanes-Oxley calls on the...

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...

The internal audit function's (IAF) regular interaction with management and continual presence within the organization place it in a unique position to monitor the organization. Although the IAF has significant potential to evaluate and improve corporate governance, research has yet to explore...

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...