ABSTRACT This study examines the effect of timing (gradual versus immediate) and direction (tax increase or decrease) of a tax change on taxpayer behavior. Specifically, we focus on capital gain tax changes and preferences for investment in riskier assets. We run an experiment with 117 participants who allocate investment dollars between two funds of differing risk. Drawing on mental accounting and hedonic editing (Thaler 1985; Thaler and Johnson 1990), we posit that a tax decrease (a “gain”) implemented gradually over several years will result in a greater increase in risky investment once the decrease is fully implemented than when the tax change is implemented all at once. In contrast, once a tax increase (a “loss”) is fully implemented, a smaller decrease in risky investment will result when the change occurs all at once rather than gradually. Our findings support these expectations, suggesting that the manner of implementing a tax law change may impact decisions. Data Availability: Contact the authors.

Negotiations are a pervasive feature of the audit process (e.g., the resolution of proposed audit adjustments and disclosures). The results of such negotiations are of great importance to the capital markets, the client, and the auditor. The purpose of this study is to examine the effectiveness of three promising, pragmatic intervention methods for enhancing auditor negotiation performance: a role-playing intervention—assuming the client's position in a mock negotiation; a passive intervention—explicitly considering the client's interests and options; and a practice intervention—engaging in a mock negotiation prior to the client negotiation. We posit that the role-playing intervention will improve negotiation results, because this approach requires direct experience in considering and arguing the client's position and more cognitive effort in obtaining an understanding of the counterpart's position, a critical factor identified in the negotiation literature for successful performance. Forty-five audit managers and partners were provided a realistic case based on an actual scenario involving the potential writedown of inventory due to obsolescence. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups (role-playing, passive, or practice) and asked to negotiate the issue with a confederate playing the role of the CFO. Auditor conservatism and a large actual subsequent writedown suggest that a significant adjustment is warranted. The results indicate that the role-playing intervention method led to an enhanced negotiation outcome (greater writedown) compared to the passive and practice groups. Process improvements on a number of dimensions were also found, particularly for the role-playing group compared to the practice group.

ABSTRACT Calls from practice suggest that audit committee members with industry expertise can improve audit committee effectiveness. Nevertheless, regulators and the extant literature have focused on the financial expertise of the audit committee. We posit that audit committee industry knowledge is valuable because accounting guidance, estimates, and oversight of the external auditor are often linked to a company's operations within a particular industry. Taking a holistic view, we examine two measures of financial reporting quality (financial restatements and discretionary accruals) and two measures of external auditor oversight (audit and nonaudit fees). As predicted, we find that audit committee members who are both accounting and industry experts perform better than those with only accounting expertise. We also find that in certain instances, supervisory experts who are also industry experts perform better than supervisory experts alone. Overall, these results suggest that industry expertise, when combined with accounting expertise, can improve the effectiveness of the audit committee in monitoring the financial reporting process. Data Availability: All data are gathered from publicly available sources.