We explore the differential market reaction to the unambiguous bad news and good news signals provided by the going-concern audit opinion and its withdrawal for 845 firms from 1994 to 2002. Results show asymmetric market response to these news events. The market underreacts to such bad news...

We test the predictions of the three main behavioral finance theories of market under- and overreaction using out-of-sample data conditional on the nature of the news using the going-concern audit opinion (bad news event) and its withdrawal (good news event). We find strong support for the...

We investigate the stock price reaction to UK going-concern audit report disclosures in the calendar year subsequent to publication. Over this period our firm population underperforms by between 24% and 31% depending on the benchmark adopted. This market underreaction to such an unambiguous bad...

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether modified opinions issued for reasons of going-concern uncertainties ('going-concern opinion') mitigate the bankruptcy announcement surprise for firms that did not previously exhibit obvious public signs of financial trouble. Extant studies...

We examine whether short-term financial reporting objectives related to executive compensation and employment horizons affect managers' decisions to undertake accelerated share repurchases (ASRs) versus open market repurchases (OMRs). In an ASR, the firm repurchases borrowed shares and...

This paper examines the interaction of a little-studied stakeholder - the venture capitalist (VC) - with the audit function in the initial public offering (IPO) market. While the monitoring role of the external auditor has been studied in the IPO accounting literature, a relatively recent stream...

This study examines whether venture capitalists (VCs) provide value-added monitoring by constraining IPO-related earnings management in their portfolio firms. Finance theoretical literature is mixed as to its characterization of whether venture capitalists reduce principal-agent conflicts...

Prior studies suggest that VCs play a monitoring role. We predict and find that IPO-year abnormal accruals are lower in the presence of VCs for a sample of 2630 IPO firms during 1983-2001. Our findings are robust to controls for the endogenous choice of VC financing. We consistently find that...