Cross-border alliances expose firms to heightened risks, posing different governance and control challenges than domestic alliances. We examine the impact of differences in alliance partner countries' institutional environments. Analysis of survey data supports our contention that cross-border alliances involve a greater reliance on formal controls, particularly when firms collaborate with partners in countries with a weaker institutional environment. These relations exist regardless of governance structure (i.e., equity or non-equity alliance) that prior research considers a critical choice for addressing cross-border alliance risks. Additional analyses show that four subdimensions of institutional characteristics (voice and accountability, regulatory quality, rule of law, and control of corruption) and one subdimension of formal controls (behavior controls) are the main drivers in the association between institutional distance and reliance on formal controls. These findings demonstrate the distinct impact of institutional environment as a country-level determinant of alliance control choices. Data Availability: Due to confidentiality agreements with respondents, the data cannot be released publicly.

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 the importance of screening cases for credible fraud allegations, and show both yield credible fraud measures. Further, we demonstrate these research design choices affect inferences from prior research and a hypothetical research setting. Finally, we show common measures of accounting irregularities using Audit Analytics to proxy for fraud result in significant false positives and negatives and develop a fraud prediction model for use in future research. We recommend using both public and private enforcement with appropriate screening when examining accounting fraud to reduce Type I and II errors, or reporting the sensitivity of findings across regimes. This is particularly important given the reduction in accounting-related enforcement after 2005.

This study investigates whether the timely revelation of bad earnings news is associated with a lower incidence of litigation. The timeliness of earnings news is captured by a new measure based on the evolution of the consensus analyst earnings forecast. Holding total bad earnings news and other determinants of litigation constant, we find that earlier revelation of bad earnings news lowers the likelihood of litigation. This result holds for both settled and dismissed lawsuits. Further, we reconcile our findings with prior work that measures timeliness using managerial warnings via press releases. These tests suggest our findings are attributable to the ability of our timeliness measure to capture bad earning news revealed through disclosure channels beyond press releases. Data Availability: Data are available from public sources identified in the paper.

The article presents a report of the Committee on Educational Standards. The purpose of accounting education is to prepare students for careers in accounting and in related fields and to prepare them to deal effectively with problems they will face as practicing members of their profession and as responsible citizens of the social and economic community in which they live. In recent years, the pattern of collegiate education for business in the U.S. has received considerable attention. The resulting re-examination of objectives, evaluations of course content, and revisions of curricula have had a major impact on accounting education as an element in the business school program. As the accounting function in modern society grows, the role of the accountant inevitably becomes larger and more important. The demand for well-educated accountants is currently high and promises to remain strong in the foreseeable future. The purpose of this study is to formulate some guidelines pointing to the educational standards that should prevail in any institution of higher education that offers degree programs involving a major in accounting, to the end that one or more degrees in accounting will indicate a standard of educational background and qualification for a professional field.

Our study is motivated by the theory of credence goods in the auditing setting. We propose that audit committee accounting expertise should reduce information asymmetries between the auditor and the client, thereby limiting auditors' ability to over-audit and under-audit. Consistent with this notion, our results indicate that when audit committees have accounting expertise, clients (1) pay lower fees when changes in standards decrease required audit effort; (2) pay a smaller fee premium in the presence of remediated material weaknesses; and (3) have a reduced likelihood of restatement when audit market competition is high. Our findings in the under-auditing setting generally are strongest among non-Big 4 engagements, consistent with non-Big 4 auditors being less sensitive to market-wide disciplining mechanisms such as reputation, legal liability, and professional regulation. We also provide evidence that the nature of audit committee members' accounting expertise differentially impacts the committee's ability to curtail over- and under-auditing.

This study examines the tax avoidance behavior of firms prior to the issuance, and following the resolution, of SEC tax comment letters. We find that firms that appear to engage in greater tax avoidance are more likely to receive a tax-related SEC comment letter. We also find that firms receiving a tax-related SEC comment letter, relative to firms receiving a non-tax comment letter, subsequently decrease their tax avoidance behavior consistent with an increase in expected tax costs. Additionally, we document evidence consistent with other firms that do not receive a comment letter reacting to multiple publicly disclosed tax-related comment letters within their industry by increasing their reported GAAP ETR, consistent with an indirect effect of regulatory scrutiny on certain types of tax avoidance.

Product market power provides firms with comparative advantages through more persistent profitability and insulation from competitive threats. These advantages likely provide firms with the ability to engage in greater tax avoidance. We present evidence consistent with this hypothesis. We also show that firms mimic the tax outcomes of their product market leaders. Among firms with greater product market power and comparatively high cash tax avoidance, we find stock prices to be less informative and that investors require additional compensation for the risks associated with comparatively high cash tax avoidance. Our results survive numerous robustness tests. Overall, our results suggest that industry dynamics, particularly related to a firm's competitive position, play a meaningful role in corporate tax policy.

This study examines whether politicians exhibit hometown favoritism in assigning preferential corporate income tax rates. We find that firms with hometown connections to incumbent provincial leaders experience favorable tax treatment. This effect is more pronounced when those leaders have strong hometown preferences and weaker when they have a strong incentive to seek promotion, suggesting that social incentives are the primary drivers of the effects on corporate tax benefits of hometown favoritism by politicians. Moreover, this effect is intensified when members of senior management have personal connections with the provincial leader. The mechanism test reveals that the provincial governments tend to qualify connected firms for preferential tax policies under their jurisdictions. Overall, our results suggest that hometown favoritism by politicians promotes tax benefits for business entities. Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources cited in the text.

Using the Regulation SHO program as a quasi-experiment, we document that the threat of short selling has a negative effect on the volume of opportunistic insider selling and a positive effect on its profitability for each transaction. These effects are stronger among firms with higher litigation risk, greater media coverage, and executives who have more of their firms' stock-related holdings. We further find robust evidence when we extend the analyses to short selling deregulations in the Chinese and Hong Kong stock exchanges. Overall, our findings suggest that short sellers play a disciplinary role in opportunistic insider selling. Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources cited in the text.

The article focuses on recommendations presented by the American Accounting Association's Committee on Concepts and Standards, regarding the use of term "reserve" in accounting. The committee recommended that the term reserve should not be employed in published financial statements of business corporations, appropriations of retained income should not be made or displayed in such a manner as to create misleading inferences, and the reserve section in corporate balance sheets should be eliminated and its elements exhibited as deduction-from-asset, or liability, or retained income amounts. In general usage, outside of accounting, a reserve is a fund of cash or other assets. In accounting the term has been used to caption a variety of balance sheet items including segregated retained income, segregated asset, asset valuation and asset amortization amounts, and liabilities. It has been recommended that the word reserve be restricted to captions describing appropriated retained income. The committee believes that the popular understanding of financial statements, and the thinking of the profession, would be promoted by abandoning the term.