A recently published academic study by Causholli, Chambers, and Payne (2014) brings new evidence to a long-standing debate about whether the provision of non-audit services (NAS) can impair auditor independence. Prior research on this question has largely found no evidence of lower financial...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is two-fold: first, to examine whether the quality of accruals, as measured by accrual persistence, improved in the post-SOX period, and second, to examine the degree to which SOX-related improvement in accrual persistence varies across companies depending...

Prior research has demonstrated an association between the magnitude of accrual anomaly-related trading returns and accrual reliability. This study first demonstrates an association between audit quality and accrual reliability. It then links this result and the prior literature to demonstrate...

This study examines three research questions. First, did accrual reliability improve in the post-SOX period? Second, do companies receiving higher-quality audits report accruals that are more reliable? Third, did the degree of SOX-related improvement in accrual reliability vary across companies...

We develop a Compustat-based financial reporting uniformity measure based on the presentation of common financial statement line items. We define uniformity as the average ratio of a firm's pairwise overlaps of non-missing Compustat data items with peer firms. Emphasizing the conceptual...

Recent studies indicate that both current Ramp;D investment levels and current or recent changes in Ramp;D investment are positively associated with subsequent excess (risk-adjusted) stock returns. The tentative explanation offered for these results is that shares of Ramp;D-intensive firms are...