This paper examines the market reaction to the public announcement of going-concern (GC) opinions through the news media. In the early 2000s, NASDAQ and AMEX required firms listed on their exchanges to announce publicly previously disclosed information, such as the issuance of a GC opinion,...

Lenders reduce their monitoring efforts after hedging their credit risk exposure through credit default swap (CDS) contracts, which are akin to insurance against borrowers' adverse credit events. In this study, we examine whether, upon observing the reduced lender monitoring following CDS...

We examine the effects of audit quality on earnings management and cost of equity capital for two groups of Chinese firms: state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and non-state-owned enterprises (NSOEs). The differences in the nature of the ownership, agency relations and bankruptcy risks lead SOEs to...

We analyze the effect of business and financial market cycles on credit ratings using a sample of firms from the Russell 3000 index that are rated by Standard and Poor’s over the period 1986-2012. We also examine investor reaction to credit rating actions in different stages of business and...

We investigate whether accounting comparability is associated with the likelihood that CEO compensation is tied to relative accounting performance (e.g., return on assets). We predict that higher accounting comparability increases the risk-sharing benefit of accounting-based RPE because peer...

We document that historical patterns of accruals seasonality predict future stock returns. Firms with historically larger accruals in a given quarter of the year earn lower stock returns when those accruals are expected to be announced. The accruals seasonality spread is significant only in the...

We examine how the threat of exit by non-blockholders (investors with ownership 5%) relates to firms’ income smoothing. Unlike informed blockholders, non-blockholders lack private information and therefore rely more on reported accounting numbers to evaluate firm performance. To isolate the...

We examine the relation between star analyst rankings and analysts’ forecast performance. To strengthen identification, we explore the exogenous variation in analysts’ incentives generated by the suspension of the New Fortune Star Analyst Contest in China. We find that the reduction in...

Despite the importance of registration with the PCAOB, there is surprisingly little academic research on the registration process and its impact on audit outcomes (Abernathy, Barnes and Stefaniak 2013). The PCAOB allows registration of audit firms from non-US countries. However, China and a few...

In 2011, the largest banks were designated as Global Systemically Important Banks (GSIBs) by the Financial Stability Board. While these banks face closer supervision and additional constraints, they also benefit from an implicit guarantee from their governments. The changed environment for these...