The determination of an audit schedule over a fixed future period constitutes a crucial part of the planning activities in an internal audit department. For each auditable unit, this problem basically revolves around tradeoffs between two types of costs: audit costs and the expected losses that...

By analysing auditors' SOX 404 reports from 2004 to 2011 we find that after 2006 Big 4 reporting of both information technology control weaknesses (ITWs) and non-ITWs in reports with ITWs decreased significantly. This change appears to reflect Big 4 reporting practices in response to a change in...

This study experimentally examines a random sample of 50 SOX 404 reports issued between 2004 and 2009 to determine their informativeness, as represented by their readability measured by the Fog index and understandability measured by coding errors. We hypothesize that there has been no change in...

We utilize a single period model to investigate the tradeoffs that management might make when faced with the necessity of disclosing the quality of the internal control over financial reporting (henceforth ICOFR) and the outcomes that would result from such tradeoffs. Our analysis indicates that...

This study examines SOX 404 reports with fiscal year-ends between 2004 and 2014 to determine their readability as measured by the FOG Index. We investigate the association between readability and company characteristics, auditor type, opinion type, time period, report content, and report length....