This paper examines insider trading around first-time debt covenant violation disclosures in SEC filings, and is interesting from a research and regulatory standpoint for three reasons – delay and infrequency of a first-time disclosure, lack of attention to covenant disclosures by regulators,...

This paper offers new findings about how audit fees vary around auditor dismissals and resignations. For dismissals, we find evidence of lower than normal fees before and after an auditor change, consistent with the view that both incumbent and successor auditors adjust fees downward to retain...

This study analyzes audit fees following SOX, in particular, the residual increase in audit fees controlling for those factors predicted to change such fees but for the Act. We find significant relations between residual audit fees and incremental audit risk, audit effort, and auditor changes....

This paper reexamines the long-standing issue of whether the consulting fees earned by auditors affect their independence. The evidence in the United States is far from settled in this regard and continues to vex academics, professionals, and policy makers alike. Our model predicts a negative...

This study finds that the agency problems of companies with high free cash flow (FCF) and low growth opportunities induce auditors of companies in the United States to raise audit fees to compensate for the additional effort. We also find that high FCF companies with high growth prospects have...

This paper offers new findings on the relation between auditor dismissals and resignations and audit fees. Unlike the prior research, which studies the fees of auditors after an auditor change, we focus on audit fees before an auditor change. Our evidence shows that incumbent auditors charge...

This paper uses market response tests to document key factors that help explain why investors find some auditor change announcements informative and others not. We find that the key drivers of investor response relate more to economic fundamentals than to the auditor change attributes in...

This study documents that investors care about companies' greenhouse gas (GHG) emission disclosures. Three kinds of evidence support this finding. First, using companies that disclose GHG emissions voluntarily through the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), we show that investors act as if they use...

This paper investigates the potential change in the securities market pricing behavior of 16 large, global automakers following disclosure of the Volkswagen emission cheating scandal. The triggering public disclosure occurred on September 18, 2015, when the EPA issued a notice of violation to...

This paper uses market response tests to document key factors that help explain why investors find some auditor change announcements informative and others not. We find that the key drivers of investor response relate more to economic fundamentals than to the auditor change attributes in...