A recently published academic study by Causholli, Chambers, and Payne (2014) brings new evidence to a long-standing debate about whether the provision of non-audit services (NAS) can impair auditor independence. Prior research on this question has largely found no evidence of lower financial...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is two-fold: first, to examine whether the quality of accruals, as measured by accrual persistence, improved in the post-SOX period, and second, to examine the degree to which SOX-related improvement in accrual persistence varies across companies depending...

Prior research has demonstrated an association between the magnitude of accrual anomaly-related trading returns and accrual reliability. This study first demonstrates an association between audit quality and accrual reliability. It then links this result and the prior literature to demonstrate...

This study examines three research questions. First, did accrual reliability improve in the post-SOX period? Second, do companies receiving higher-quality audits report accruals that are more reliable? Third, did the degree of SOX-related improvement in accrual reliability vary across companies...

We develop a Compustat-based financial reporting uniformity measure based on the presentation of common financial statement line items. We define uniformity as the average ratio of a firm's pairwise overlaps of non-missing Compustat data items with peer firms. Emphasizing the conceptual...

Recent studies indicate that both current Ramp;D investment levels and current or recent changes in Ramp;D investment are positively associated with subsequent excess (risk-adjusted) stock returns. The tentative explanation offered for these results is that shares of Ramp;D-intensive firms are...

Numerous studies have used the proportion of anomalous returns earned during earnings announcement intervals as evidence to distinguish between risk and mispricing explanations for those returns. This approach implicitly assumes that returns expected as compensation for risk-bearing are earned...

We investigate the possibility that earnings response coefficients (ERCs) are increasing in total risk (i.e., the sum of systematic and unsystematic risk). As in prior risk-ERC studies, we model firm value by discounting expected dividends at risk adjusted rates. We argue that ERCs increase with...

This study investigates the extent to which potential financial reporting benefits from capitalizing and amortizing Ramp;D costs depend on increasing the level of discretion permitted to financial statement preparers. To provide evidence on this issue, we examine the impact of alternative...

This study seeks to find evidence of misallocation of invested capital caused by opportunistic earnings management. Investors, if unable to detect the direction and magnitude of the managed portion of reported earnings, may tend to over-value firms practicing income-increasing earnings...