← Search

The Review of Corporate Finance Studies Vol. 1 No. 1 2012

Corporate Fraud, Governance, and Auditing

Marco Pagano1; Giovanni Immordino2

1 Università di Napoli Federico II, CSEF, EIEF, and Imperial College · 2 Università di Salerno and CSEF

Abstract

We analyze corporate fraud in a setting in which managers have superior information but are biased against liquidation because of their private benefits from empire building. This may induce them to misreport information and even bribe auditors when liquidation would be value-increasing. To curb fraud, shareholders optimally design corporate governance by jointly choosing audit quality and managerial compensation. We analyze how country-level rules affect these firm-level choices. Our analysis underscores that different country-level governance provisions have different effects on firm-level governance: Some act as substitutes of internal governance mechanisms, whereas others enhance their effectiveness and therefore complement them.

DOI
10.1093/rcfs/cfs001
Volume
1
Issue
1
Pages
109-133
Language
en
Sources
openalex bibtex:phds-export.bib crossref

Cite