This paper reports descriptive evidence about how managers attempt to manage earnings, based on a sample of 515 earnings-management attempts obtained from a survey of 253 experienced auditors (and also analyzed by Nelson et al. 2002). We classify attempts first according to primary approach:...

This paper uses firms' disclosures of internal control problems prior to audits mandated by Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) to investigate the economic factors that expose firms to internal control failure risks and managements' incentives to discover and report internal control...

This paper reports descriptive evidence about how managers attempt to manage earnings, based on a sample of 515 earnings-management attempts obtained from a survey of 253 experienced auditors (and also analyzed by Nelson et al. 2002). We classify attempts first according to primary approach:...

Auditors are the gatekeepers to the public securities markets and their independence is central to the effectiveness of auditors as gatekeepers. Our general interest is on independence and we investigate how financial and non-financial incentives affect choices made by an auditor-gatekeeper...

Using publicly available data from annual reports, we find that SEC rule changes (33-8128 and 33-8644) that impose time pressure on the audits of registered firms have a negative impact on earnings quality, which we interpret as evidence of lower audit quality. Consistent with our predictions,...

Mandatory audit partner rotation has been adopted in certain countries while audit firm rotation is still being debated in many places. Most of the extant research on the relation between auditor tenure and earnings quality provides evidence at the audit firm level. However, since audit firm...

This paper examines the effect of financial restatements on the firm's source of debt financing, contractual debt covenants and cost of debt, both in the public and the private debt markets. Using a sample of public debt issued, we find evidence of higher treasury-spreads post restatement, which...

Under the assumption that audit quality relates positively to unobservable financial reporting reliability, we investigate whether audit quality is associated with the predictability of accounting earnings by focusing on analyst earnings forecast properties. The evidence shows that analysts'...

Mandatory audit partner rotation has been adopted in certain countries while audit firm rotation is still being debated in many places. Most of the extant research on the relation between auditor tenure and earnings quality provides evidence at the audit firm level. However, since audit firm...

We examine how an auditor assesses the risk of fraud and formulates an audit plan when the auditee has the opportunity to commit various types of fraud. Unlike previous studies, the auditee can misappropriate assets (also called defalcation), misreport financial information (also called...