Knowledge that Transforms

Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Search Site Cite View This Citation Add to Citation Manager Citation Patrick J. Harvey; Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike. The Accounting Review 1 July 2017; 92 (4): 269–272. https://doi.org/10.2308/accr-10538 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentThe Accounting Review Search Advanced Search

ABSTRACT In December 1999, the SEC instituted a new listing standard for NYSE and NASDAQ firms. Listed firms were now required to maintain fully independent audit committees with at least three members. In July 2002, the U.S. Congress legislated these standards through the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Our research question is whether all investors benefited from the 1999 new rule. Using both an event study and a difference-in-differences methodology, we find no evidence of higher market value or better financial reporting quality resulting from this rule.

ABSTRACT We provide new evidence on the agency theory of corporate tax avoidance (Slemrod 2004; Crocker and Slemrod 2005; Chen and Chu 2005) by showing that increases in institutional ownership are associated with increases in tax avoidance. Using the Russell index reconstitution setting to isolate exogenous shocks to institutional ownership, and a regression discontinuity design that facilitates sharper identification of treatment effects, we find a significant and discontinuous increase in tax avoidance following Russell 2000 inclusion. The tax avoidance involves the use of tax shelters, and immediate benefits include higher profit margins and likelihood of meeting or beating analyst expectations. Collectively, the results shed light on the effect of increased ownership concentration on tax avoidance.

ABSTRACT This paper analyzes a manager's optimal expectations management strategy in a setting in which the manager provides forecast guidance to an analyst both privately and publicly. Conventional wisdom suggests that managers use private communications with analysts and public earnings forecasts interchangeably to guide analysts' earnings forecasts downward toward lower earnings targets. Our analysis shows that in markets with rational investors, private and public guidance play very different roles in managing expectations, and that managers benefit from downward guidance only in their private communication with analysts. In their public forecasts, they benefit from introducing an upward bias. We explore how the effectiveness of the private and public channels in communicating information to analysts affects managers' incentive to engage in expectations management, and provide a number of empirical predictions. Among other results, we show how reducing private communication between managers and analysts (through means such as Regulation Fair Disclosure) can increase price efficiency, weaken managers' motivation to engage in private, as well as public, expectations management, and increase managers' motivation to provide public disclosures.

ABSTRACT We investigate the impact of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board's (PCAOB) first-time inspections of foreign accounting firms by examining abnormal accruals around the inspection year, and the value relevance of accounting numbers around the inspection report date, for their U.S. cross-listed clients. We document lower abnormal accruals in the post-inspection period, and greater value relevance of accounting numbers in the post-report period for clients of the inspected auditors, compared with non-cross-listed clients or clients of non-inspected auditors within the inspected countries. Comparisons of the PCAOB's joint inspections with PCAOB stand-alone inspections indicate that while both experience lower post-inspection abnormal accruals, the former benefit more than the latter. The value relevance measure, in contrast, shows greater increases for the PCAOB stand-alone inspections than for joint inspections. Comparing the inspection effects for auditors with and without deficiency reports, we find no systematic differences for accruals or for value relevance.

ABSTRACT Research documents significant management bias and opportunism around the discretionary inputs of audited complex estimates, including fair value measurements (FVMs), which raises questions about auditors' ability to test these estimates. We examine how the degree of quantification in client evidence and client control environment risk influence auditors' planned substantive testing of management's discretionary inputs to FVMs. We find that auditors allocate a lower proportion of effort to testing the subjective inputs to the fair value estimate when the degree of quantification in the client evidence and level of client risk are both high. Further, this tendency persists even after auditors receive a regulatory practice alert reminding them to focus more audit effort on testing fair value (FV) inputs that are susceptible to management bias, and despite the auditors increasing their overall audit effort. Qualitative analyses of the procedures auditors selected indicate that inapt attention to the degree of quantification in evidence is a potential root cause of the difficulty auditors encounter when testing complex estimates. Our results imply that in situations where both quantified and non-quantified data are important to the audit, there is the potential for management to manipulate the evidence they provide to auditors to distract auditors from testing the discretionary inputs to complex estimates that are susceptible to management opportunism. Data Availability: Contact authors for data availability.

ABSTRACT We examine the response of informed market participants to the informational signal of auditor changes. Using propensity score matching and difference-in-differences research designs, we document that loan spreads increase by 22 percent on bank loans initiated within a year after auditor changes, increasing direct loan costs by approximately $6.6 million. We also find a significant increase in upfront and annual fees and the probability of pledging collateral, consistent with an increase in screening and monitoring by banks. The increase in spreads is significant for client-initiated auditor changes, with or without disagreements with the auditor, as well as for auditor resignations. Further, the significant increase in loan spreads is documented for upward, lateral, and downward auditor changes. Our results are robust to other proxies for financial reporting quality. Finally, we find no effect resulting from the forced auditor changes due to Arthur Andersen. Collectively, these results suggest that voluntary auditor changes increase information risk, which is priced in private credit markets. JEL Classifications: G20; G21; G32; K22.

ABSTRACT This study examines the effect of product market competition on managerial disclosure of earnings forecasts using large reductions in U.S. import tariff rates to identify an exogenous increase in competition for domestic firms in U.S. product markets. Our difference-in-differences estimations show that tariff reductions are associated with a significant decrease in management forecasts of annual earnings by U.S. domestic firms. Further, this decrease is more pronounced when the tariff rate reduction triggers a greater increase in imports and when the forecasts are likely to incur higher proprietary costs. Our findings are consistent with competition from existing rivals reducing voluntary disclosure through increased proprietary costs.

Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Search Site Cite View This Citation Add to Citation Manager Citation Andrew Bird, Stephen A. Karolyi; Governance and Taxes: Evidence from Regression Discontinuity (Retracted). The Accounting Review 1 January 2017; 92 (1): 29–50. https://doi.org/10.2308/accr-51520 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentThe Accounting Review Search Advanced Search

ABSTRACT U.S. laws provide explicit whistleblower protections and direct regulators to adopt ambitious programs to reward whistleblowing. However, there is limited evidence on whether employee whistleblowing deters financial misreporting and tax aggressiveness. Using a sample of employee whistleblower cases obtained from the U.S. government, I provide evidence that firms subject to whistleblowing allegations exhibit significant decreases in financial misreporting and tax aggressiveness, compared with control firms. I find that this deterrent effect persists for at least two years beyond the year of the allegation. JEL Classifications: H25; M41; M48. Data Availability: All data are available from public sources identified in the paper.