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...

We review recent behavioral studies of the effects of regulation on earnings management and accounting choice. Our review examines the impact of financial reporting, auditing, and other corporate governance regulations on the beliefs and choices of managers, auditors and corporate directors....

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) mandates management evaluation and independent audits of internal control effectiveness. The mandate is costly to firms but may yield benefits through lower information risk that translates into lower cost of equity. We use unaudited pre-SOX 404 disclosures and SOX...

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),...

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...

Thousands of US companies appear to have secretly backdated stock options. This paper analyzes three forms of secret option backdating: (1) the backdating of executives' option grants; (2) the backdating of non-executive employees' option grants; and (3) the backdating of executives' option...

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...