Most accounting studies use only public enforcement actions (SEC cases) to measure accounting fraud. However, private cases (securities class actions) also play an important enforcement role. We discuss the legal standards and processes for both public and private enforcement regimes, emphasize...

This study introduces a new measure of ex ante litigation risk using scrutiny of SEC filings by the source of securities litigation—plaintiffs' lawyers—to reduce measurement error, relative to existing measures. We show that plaintiff-lawyer views proxy for the largely unobservable factors...

It is unclear how investors can quickly impound information from litigation filings given frictions to obtain the filings and interpret their complex legalese. However, specialized media members have expertise and ability to obtain filings and report on their content. We isolate the media’s...

In 2001, Nevada significantly limited the personal legal liability of corporate officers and directors. We use this exogenous shock to implement a differences-in-differences design that examines the impact of officer and director litigation risk on agency costs. We find decreased firm value,...

Due to previous data unavailability, it is unclear how important directors' and officers' (D&O) insurance is in securities fraud class action settlements. Using a unique dataset of U.S. D&O policies, we find that D&O coverage is a less significant determinant of settlement amounts than estimated...