Calls for eliminating differences between accounting earnings and taxable income in the U.S. have been debated extensively. Proponents of increased book-tax conformity argue that tax compliance will increase and earnings quality will improve. Opponents argue that earnings quality will decline....

We investigate whether shorts and analysts differ in their use of fundamental and other information that is predictive of future returns. Remarkably, open short interest is significantly associated in the expected direction with all eleven variables examined. In contrast, analysts tend to...

This paper draws on two distinct literatures ndash; one that investigates the impact of accounting restatements and another that investigates the trading behavior of short sellers ndash; to further our understanding of how sophisticated investors process and respond to news about accounting...

We provide evidence on the determinants of the choice of an industry specialist auditor and the effect of this choice on cost of equity for a sample of firms that are audited by Big N auditors. We find that firms with more severe conflicts of interest between managers and shareholders are more...

Prior studies document that firms using a Big 4 auditor have a lower cost of capital than other firms. We extend this literature by examining whether using an industry specialist auditor reduces cost of capital for clients of Big 4 audit firms. We document that firms that use Big 4 auditors that...