New internal control reporting (ICR) requirements under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) imposed affirmative duties on managers and auditors to evaluate and attest to the effectiveness of internal controls. This paper studies the role of ICR regulation in alleviating accounting manipulation....

We study the effects of the disclosure of critical audit matters (CAMs) on an auditor's audit effort and an investor's scrutiny effort decisions, as well as on investment efficiency. Both the auditor and the investor can prevent a bad investment by respectively auditing and scrutinizing the...

The joint provision of audit and non-audit services by audit firms to their audit clients has posed a threat to auditor independence. To mitigate the independence problem, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a regulation (SEC 2003) that prohibits audit partners from...