When used in conjunction with traditional R&D expenditure information, scientific information on patent quality appear to give investors a more useful basis upon which to judge the economic merit of the firm's R&D effort. This complementary relation suggests that consistent disclosure of patent...

Much of the agency literature assumes that various monitoring devices are partial substitutes in reducing total agency costs. In particular, internal and external auditing often are characterized as monitoring devices that should be partial substitutes. We argue that reliable evidence of this...