The ongoing debate regarding the desirability of extending certain provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to auditors of nonpublic companies creates a need for a better understanding of the effectiveness of existing sanctioning mechanisms in the accounting profession. To provide input on this...

Reported financial scandals have galvanized considerable interest in and discussion on the role of corporate governance in the financial reporting process. Many factors, including high-profile financial scandals, well-publicized restatements of financial reports, and concerns over auditors'...

For three centuries, Anglo-American Governments have been creating regulation and governance reforms (including mandatory audit requirements) in reaction to fraud. The most recent attempt in the U.S. is the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX). The Capital Markets Leadership Task Force Report in Canada...

This paper focuses on a sample of 261 companies that have disclosed at least one material weakness in internal control in their SEC filings after the effective date of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. Based on the descriptive material weakness disclosures provided by management, we find that poor...

The legislation known as Sarbanes Oxley (SOX) requires firms to assess their internal controls over financial reporting and to report material weaknesses, as defined by the Public Accounting Oversight Board. Based upon early evidence, we find that firms with material weaknesses are, on average,...

Certification of financial reports is tightly regulated with the intent to ensure the quality of this service. In order to place this market within a larger perspective, Part I of this paper presents archival data on certification activity in the economy. The finding of widespread availability...

Independence (in fact as well as in appearance) is widely thought to be necessary for the quality of audits, and audit quality is often equated with independence. Private incentives to demand (and supply) independent certification of financial statements are thought to be insufficient, thus the...

We examine the issue of auditor independence in a unique setting. Specifically, we test for auditor independence impairment among (1) private client firms, for which the risk of auditor reputation loss is lower than for publicly traded firms, and (2) in a low litigation environment (i.e.,...

Prior studies document that firms using a Big 4 auditor have a lower cost of capital than other firms. We extend this literature by examining whether using an industry specialist auditor reduces cost of capital for clients of Big 4 audit firms. We document that firms that use Big 4 auditors that...

This study derives and tests an economic framework that explains the relation between corporate governance and the fees paid by companies for auditing. Importantly, our framework posits and we find that auditing and governance are co-determined by two countervailing relations, namely, a...