We rely on governance theory summarized in Adams, Hermalin, and Weisbach (2010) and Bushman (2009) which suggests that corporate governance characteristics may be endogenous. This differs from past research that links governance to fraud (i.e., Farber 2005) and assumes corporate governance is...

We use United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) comment letters and accounting restatements to investigate the SEC's Division of Corporation Finance (DCF) financial reporting oversight procedures. We investigate how DCF compares with “other monitors” in identifying disclosures...

Research suggests that new information technologies can improve the functionality of business processes, leading to improved firm profitability. However, new technologies are not equal in their contributions to a company’s bottom line. Further, there is some debate as to whether early adopters...

Using absorption costing, manufacturing firms can manipulate production (relative to sales) to shift fixed costs between cost of goods sold and inventory accounts, thereby managing earnings either upward or downward. Considering two earnings targets (avoiding losses and consensus analyst...

The 2004 American Jobs Creation Act (AJCA or the Act) was intended to encourage U.S. companies to repatriate foreign earnings and invest them domestically to increase capital spending and employment. We investigate combined effects of two tax provisions, i.e., the repatriation tax holiday and...

Reform of the U.S. international tax policy is under consideration in Congress. Policymakers are concerned with both reducing tax disincentives to repatriate earnings to the U.S. and with constraining business tactics to move U.S. income offshore. We argue that to achieve significant tax reform,...

Under the current U.S. tax system, corporations have an incentive to defer the repatriation of their foreign earnings. This incentive is commonly referred to as the lock-out effect. The lock-out effect is significant, as estimates indicate that U.S. corporations hold nearly $2 trillion of...

The American Jobs Creation Act (AJCA) of 2004 provided a one-time tax holiday for firms to repatriate foreign earnings. AJCA was intended to stimulate the economy by expediting the repatriation of foreign earnings and requiring that those repatriations be invested in domestic operations. This...

The American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 (the Act) created a tax holiday encouraging firms to repatriate foreign earnings and invest that capital in the United States. However, the Act did not require a direct tracing of the spending of repatriated funds; accordingly, repatriating firms could...