We examine whether it is incentives or standards that determine firms' financial reporting quality using a natural experiment in Taiwan. Before 2001, Taiwan's Company Act required private firms with capital levels exceeding a certain threshold to file and publish audited financial statements....

How are decisions influenced by the presentation of nontraditional and nonfinancial accounting information, such as environmental measurements, when benchmark data provide vague signals for analysis? Generally, alternatives are analyzed either jointly (called joint evaluation mode, or JE) or...