After more than 50 years of self‐regulation of the US auditing profession, the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) created the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) as a quasi‐governmental ...entity with statutory authority to inspect accounting firms that audit public clients. The frequency of this inspection is annual or triennial, based upon the number of public clients the firm audits. We examine the effects of these two levels of inspection frequency on financial reporting quality and audit fees for clients of small and midsize public accounting firms. Our findings provide evidence of significantly higher audit quality and audit fees for clients of annually inspected firms relative to clients of triennially inspected firms. These findings are robust to auditor‐client alignment analyses, propensity score matching, time‐series analyses, examination of firms that have changed from triennial to annual inspection, and particular examination of firms with inspection deficiencies. Overall, our study suggests that the two‐tier frequency system of PCAOB inspection may have also resulted in two‐tier audit quality and audit fee systems for small and midsize public accounting firms, with more frequent inspection leading to more rigorous and informed auditor decisions. We discuss the implications of our results for the Board and the profession at large.
We examine the impact of firm ownership (public vs. private) and the perception of the reputation of the quality of suppliers of the country from where products are sourced on time-to-recall of ...defective products from the market. Operationalizing time-to-recall as the time that has elapsed from the date of first sale in the market to the date it was recalled, we test the influence of the interplay between firm ownership and perception of the reputation of the quality of suppliers of the country on time-to-recall using data on 400 toy recalls issued in the USA during 2007–2018. We find that time-to-recall is shorter for publicly traded firms than it is for private firms. This effect is more pronounced when the products are sourced from countries with poor perception of the reputation of the quality of suppliers. We discuss the research and managerial implications of our findings.
Sarbanes-Oxley and corporate risk-taking Bargeron, Leonce L.; Lehn, Kenneth M.; Zutter, Chad J.
Journal of accounting & economics,
02/2010, Volume:
49, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
We empirically examine whether risk-taking by publicly traded US companies declined significantly after adoption of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX). Several provisions of SOX are likely to ...discourage risk-taking, including an expanded role for independent directors, an increase in director and officer liability, and rules related to internal controls. We find several measures of risk-taking decline significantly for US versus non-US firms after SOX. The magnitudes of the declines are related to several firm characteristics, including pre-SOX board structure, firm size, and R&D expenditures. The evidence is consistent with the proposition that SOX discourages risk-taking by public US companies.
This study examines internal control weaknesses (ICWs) reported under Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Section 302 in the context of mergers and acquisitions. We predict that problems in an acquirer's internal ...control environment have adverse operational implications for acquisition performance. We argue that acquirers with low-quality internal information needed to select profitable acquisitions will make poorer acquisition decisions. We also argue that ICWs impede effective monitoring and are likely to hinder integration tasks that are important to acquisition profitability. We find that ICWs disclosed prior to an acquisition announcement predict significantly lower post-acquisition operating performance and abnormal stock returns. Poorer post-acquisition performance is concentrated in ICWs that are expected to impede acquisition activities (i.e., forecasting/valuation, monitoring, and integration). Our findings contribute to the literature linking ineffective internal control over financial reporting to negative operational outcomes. We also contribute to the SOX cost-benefit debate by documenting a previously unidentified benefit of ICW disclosures.
This study aims to describe tax avoidance or tax aggressiveness committed by a public company in Indonesia. To maintain company sustainability, taxation strategy must always be supported by a ...non-financial system. In Indonesia, sustainability report disclosure is voluntary, but the Indonesian government handles the issue by requiring the inclusion of social and environmental activities in the report as taxable operational costs. The research sample of this study comprises public companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange, which have submitted sustainability reports separately. A total of 68 companies were involved, from which 132 datasets were obtained for further analysis via regression test. This research introduces a new way to measure tax aggressiveness (fiscal effective tax rate) to supplement the results generated by the existing measure (GAAP effective tax rate). The development of research shows that sustainability reporting has a significant effect on tax aggressiveness committed by public companies in Indonesia.
We explore whether firm managers trade on future stock price crash risk. This depends on managers’ ability to assess future crash risk, and on whether the expected payoff is greater than the expected ...costs associated with potential reputation loss and litigation risk. We find that insider sales are positively associated with future crash risk, which is consistent with managers’ trading on crash risk for personal gain. We also find that managers take advantage of high information opacity to pursue crash-risk-based insider sales more aggressively, but are less able to capitalize on this in the case of financial constraints or post-SOX.
In this study, we examine the effect of CEO and CFO power on both accruals and real earnings management (AEM and REM, respectively), and the extent to which CEO and CFO power mitigate the effect of ...one another on AEM and REM. We further examine whether the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) altered these effects. In the pre-SOX period, we find that AEM (REM) is greater when the CEO (CFO) is powerful relative to the CFO (CEO). In the post-SOX period, however, we find that the effect of relative CEO power on AEM subsides, whereas the effect of relative CFO power on REM persists. Additionally, we find evidence to suggest that powerful CFOs inhibit the AEM preferences of powerful CEOs in both the pre- and post-SOX periods. Finally, we find evidence to suggest that powerful CEOs inhibit the REM preferences of powerful CEOs in the pre-SOX period, but not in the post-SOX period. Collectively, our results suggest that the power of the CEO relative to the CFO is an important factor in the both the type and magnitude of earnings management.
We study the impact of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act on the relationship between corporate governance and company performance. We consider 5 measures of corporate governance during the period 1998–2007. We ...find a significant negative relationship between board independence and operating performance during the pre-2002 period, but a positive and significant relationship during the post-2002 period. Our most important contribution is a proposal of a governance measure, namely, dollar ownership of the board members, that is simple, intuitive, less prone to measurement error, and not subject to the problem of weighting a multitude of governance provisions in constructing a governance index.
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.
We study the determinants and consequences of cross-listings on the New York and London stock exchanges from 1990 to 2005. This investigation enables us to evaluate the relative benefits of New York ...and London exchange listings and to assess whether these relative benefits have changed over time, perhaps as a result of the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002. We find that cross-listings have been falling on US exchanges as well as on the Main Market in London. This decline in cross-listings is explained by changes in firm characteristics instead of by changes in the benefits of cross-listing. We show that after controlling for firm characteristics there is no deficit in cross-listing counts on US exchanges related to SOX. Investigating the valuation differential between listed and non-listed firms (the cross-listing premium) from 1990 to 2005, we find that there is a significant premium for US exchange listings every year, that the premium has not fallen significantly in recent years, and that it persists when allowing for time-invariant unobservable firm characteristics. In contrast, no premium exists for listings on London's Main Market in any year. Firms increase their capital-raising activities at home and abroad following a cross-listing on a major US exchange but not following a cross-listing in London. Our evidence is consistent with the theory that an exchange listing in New York has unique governance benefits for foreign firms.
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