For the period of 2006 to 2008, we collect Comment Letters issued by the SEC that question the application of US GAAP by US firms or the application of IFRS by European firms registered with the SEC. We investigate whether institutional investors react to the letters by changing their holdings...

Following Basu (1997), the excess of the sensitivity of accounting earnings to negative share return over its sensitivity to positive share return (the Basu coefficient) has been interpreted as an indicator of conditional accounting conservatism. Although this interpretation is supported by...