We study nonofficer directors’ influence on the accounting conservatism of U.S. public firms. Between 1986 and 2002, all 50 U.S. states enacted laws that limited nonofficer directors’ litigation risk but often left officer directors’ litigation risk unchanged. We find that conditional conservatism decreased after the staggered enactments of the laws, which we attribute to less nonofficer director monitoring of financial reporting in affected firms. Conservatism fell less when shareholder or debtholder power was high, consistent with major stakeholders moderating the influence of nonofficer directors. We verify that our results stem from reductions in the asymmetric timeliness of accruals and, specifically, its current assets components. We also show that affected firms switched away from Big N auditors more often, which reduced these firms’ commitment to conservative financial reports.

We study the influence of bank competition on U.S. public borrowers’ accounting conservatism by exploiting the staggered adoption of the Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act (IBBEA) of 1994, which increased the threats of new bank entrants and actual bank entry. We find that borrowers’ conditional conservatism fell after IBBEA. Conservatism fell more for firms located in states with weak incumbent banks and states with more out-of-state entrants, especially entrants with better monitoring technologies. The decrease in conservatism partially stems from borrowers’ increased investment and risk-taking incentives. Conservatism fell more for firms relying more on bank loans, especially those that borrowed loans for the first time after IBBEA and for firms having lower dedicated institutional ownership and board independence. We also find that loans included fewer covenants and that bank loan borrowers became less likely to choose Big N auditors and industry specialist auditors after IBBEA. Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources cited in the text.

We examine financing outcomes for small businesses seeking to sell public securities in a setting characterized by high information asymmetry, weak requirements for auditor participation, and a complete absence of Big N auditors. Issuers that raise capital from small, unsophisticated investors through crowdfunding, under the Securities and Exchange Commission's Regulation Crowdfunding (RegCF), often need no auditor attestation or need only weak attestation in the form of reviews, not audits, of their financial statements. We find that auditor reviews are positively associated with both the probability of crowdfunding success and the total amount raised. Further, we compare outcomes for issuers that procure auditor reviews voluntarily and mandatorily, and document that issuers with voluntary reviews have better outcomes. We conjecture that for issuers that voluntarily procure reviews, the reviews serve as signals of high future prospects. Finally, the positive effect of reviews is concentrated in PCAOB-registered auditors.