Many countries use tax-related whistleblowing programs, but the evidence on these programs suggests information provided by whistleblowers yields modest tax collections. However, when every citizen could become a whistleblower, deterrence from tax evasion can by itself increase tax collections....

Revenues and expenses are fundamentally proportional to one another, but are likely to be disproportionally affected by transitory items or economic shocks. We build on this observation and propose a new measure of sustainable earnings based on deviations from normal profit margins. While some...

An important aim of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) was to reduce cost of capital by enhancing auditor independence. However, prior literature has argued that SOX has been ineffective in meeting this objective. We contribute to this debate by first providing evidence suggesting that auditor...

We show negative stock returns reverse more and contain less information on the long-term changes in share prices than positive stock returns mostly on nondisclosure days, and these information differences between negative and positive returns decrease substantially on disclosure days. The...

This study examines investor reaction to return on common equity (ROCE) and its components around the announcement of quarterly earnings. It is an issue that the accounting literature has not examined, notwithstanding the importance of ratio analysis in general and the DuPont decomposition in...

Is human capital an asset? We empirically address this question using the accounting concept of assets - costs should be capitalized as assets if they are expected to generate future measurable benefits with reasonable certainty. Also, holding the investment opportunity set constant, disposal of...