Empirical Evidence on Repeat Restatements

2013 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Files ◽  
Nathan Y. Sharp ◽  
Anne M. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Internal Control ◽  
Stock Prices ◽  
Data Availability ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Accounting Quality ◽  
Ex Ante ◽  
Internal Control Weaknesses ◽  
Market Consequences ◽  
Jel Classifications

SYNOPSIS This study examines the characteristics and market consequences of repeat restatements. We find that 38 percent of the restating companies in our sample restate at least twice between 2002 and 2008, and 31 percent of repeat restatement firms restate three or more times during the same period. Our tests identify several auditor and restatement characteristics that distinguish single from repeat restatements at the time of the first restatement. Repeat restatements are more likely among clients of non-Big N auditors and those with lower ex ante accounting quality. However, firms that switch auditors between the end of their misstatement period and the restatement announcement are less likely to experience repeat restatements. Although subsequent restatements tend to be less severe than the first in a series of restatements, firms suffer similar declines in stock prices with up to three restatement announcements. In addition, firms often restate the same fiscal periods multiple times, and these “overlapping” restatements are more frequent when managers are distracted by other difficulties, such as discontinued operations or internal control weaknesses. Our findings should be valuable to investors, regulators, and other parties interested in repeat restatements. We provide research design recommendations for researchers to incorporate in future research. JEL Classifications: M41; M42; G34. Data Availability: All data used in this study are publicly available from the sources indicated.

Do Career Concerns Affect the Delay of Bad News Disclosure?

2017 ◽  
Vol 93 (2) ◽  
pp. 61-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen P. Baginski ◽  
John L. Campbell ◽  
Lisa A. Hinson ◽  
David S. Koo
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Career Concerns ◽  
Data Availability ◽  
Bad News ◽  
Severance Pay ◽  
The Public ◽  
Ex Ante ◽  
Theoretical Evidence ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Jel Classifications

ABSTRACT Theory argues that career concerns (i.e., concerns about the impact of current performance on contemporaneous and future compensation) encourage managers to withhold bad news disclosure. However, empirical evidence regarding the extent to which a manager's career concerns are associated with a delay in bad news disclosure is limited. Across multiple proxies for career concerns, we find that the extent to which managers delay bad news is positively associated with their level of career concerns. Then, we hand-collect data on a compensation contract that firms use to reduce CEOs' career concerns (i.e., ex ante severance pay agreements). We find that if managers receive a sufficiently large payment in the event of dismissal, they no longer delay the disclosure of bad news. Overall, our findings support prior theoretical evidence that managers delay bad news disclosure due to career concerns and suggest a mechanism through which firms can mitigate the delay. JEL Classifications: M12; M41. Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources cited in the text.

Interim Reporting Frequency and the Mispricing of Accruals

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 29-47
Author(s):  
Shou-Min Tsao ◽  
Hsueh-Tien Lu ◽  
Edmund C. Keung
Keyword(s):  
Financial Reporting ◽  
Stock Prices ◽  
Data Availability ◽  
Financial Reports ◽  
Regulatory Changes ◽  
Sample Composition ◽  
Reporting Frequency ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Jel Classifications ◽  
Accrual Mispricing

SYNOPSIS This study examines the association between mandatory financial reporting frequency and the accrual anomaly. Based on regulatory changes in reporting frequency requirements in Taiwan, we divide our sample period into three reporting regimes: a semiannual reporting regime from 1982 to 1985, a quarterly reporting regime from 1986 to 1987, and a monthly reporting regime (both quarterly financial reports and monthly revenue disclosure) from 1988 to 1993. We find that although both switches (from the semiannual reporting regime to the quarterly reporting regime and from the quarterly reporting regime to the monthly reporting regime) hasten the dissemination of the information contained in annual accruals into stock prices and reduce annual accrual mispricing, the switch to monthly reporting has a lesser effect. Our results are robust to controlling for risk factors, transaction costs, and potential changes in accrual, cash flow persistence, and sample composition over time. These results imply that more frequent reporting is one possible mechanism to reduce accrual mispricing. JEL Classifications: G14; L51; M41; M48. Data Availability: Data are available from sources identified in the paper.

Board Independence and Internal Control Weakness: Evidence from SOX 404 Disclosures

2016 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 45-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yangyang Chen ◽  
W. Robert Knechel ◽  
Vijaya Bhaskar Marisetty ◽  
Cameron Truong ◽  
Madhu Veeraraghavan
Keyword(s):  
Internal Control ◽  
Internal Controls ◽  
Board Independence ◽  
Negative Relation ◽  
Internal Control Weaknesses ◽  
A Company ◽  
Jel Classifications

SUMMARY In this paper, we investigate whether board independence has an impact on the likelihood that a company reports weaknesses in internal controls. Using a sample of 11,226 firm-year observations spanning the period 2004–2012, we establish several findings. First, we document a negative relation between board independence and the disclosure of internal control weaknesses. We also document that the negative relation is stronger for firms with unitary leadership (combined positions of CEO and chairman) than for firms with dual leadership. Next, we show that board independence is associated with both fewer account-specific and company-level weaknesses. Finally, we show that board independence is associated with timely remediation of internal control weaknesses and that the implementation of Auditing Standard No. 5 in 2007 weakens the effect of board independence on the disclosure of ICW. JEL Classifications: G10; G18.

Management's Responsibility Acceptance, Locus of Breach, and Investors' Reactions to Internal Control Reports

2018 ◽  
Vol 93 (6) ◽  
pp. 331-355 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hun-Tong Tan ◽  
Yao Yu
Keyword(s):  
Adverse Event ◽  
Internal Control ◽  
Relative Strength ◽  
Data Availability ◽  
Effective Strategy ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Jel Classifications

ABSTRACT The triangle model of responsibility (Schlenker, Britt, Pennington, Murphy, and Doherty 1994) predicts that the extent that investors hold management responsible for an adverse event is jointly determined by the links among three elements—management, the adverse event, and the relevant accounting regulations/standards or public norms. Applying this theory, we conduct experiments to examine how the locus of breach (external versus internal) moderates the efficacy of management's responsibility acceptance (higher versus lower). Our results show that management's higher (versus lower) responsibility acceptance is a more effective strategy in the presence of an external breach, but not in the presence of an internal breach (Experiment 1). Follow-up experiments suggest that this result is driven by the relative strength of the triangle links underlying the external versus internal breaches, rather than the locus per se. JEL Classifications: G40; M41. Data Availability: Contact the authors.

On Controlling for Misstatement Risk

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
James R Moon ◽  
Jonathan E Shipman ◽  
Quinn T Swanquist ◽  
Robert L. Whited
Keyword(s):  
Internal Control ◽  
Audit Quality ◽  
Financial Statements ◽  
Audit Fees ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Coefficient Estimates ◽  
Recent Approach ◽  
Material Weaknesses ◽  
Ex Ante ◽  
Alternative Approaches

Ex ante misstatement risk confounds most settings relying on misstatements as a measure of audit quality, but researchers continue to debate how to effectively control for this construct. In this study, we consider a recent approach that involves controlling for prior period misstatements (“Lagged Misstatements”). Using a controlled simulation and a basic archival analysis, we show that a lagged misstatement control can significantly bias coefficient estimates. We demonstrate this bias using audit fees as a variable of interest but also show the same issue manifests for other measures that respond to the restatement of misstated financial statements (i.e., internal control material weaknesses and auditor changes). We conclude by discussing alternative approaches for controlling for ex ante misstatement risk and providing guidance for future research.

scholarly journals Accounting Quality and Debt Concentration

2020 ◽  
pp. 0000-0000 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ningzhong Li ◽  
Yun Lou ◽  
Clemens A Otto ◽  
Regina Wittenberg-Moerman
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Research ◽  
Internal Control ◽  
Default Risk ◽  
Accounting Quality ◽  
Strong Link ◽  
Corporate Capital ◽  
Comprehensive Index ◽  
Coordination Costs ◽  
Internal Control Weaknesses ◽  
Creditor Coordination

We examine the relation between accounting quality and debt concentration in corporate capital structures (i.e., firms' tendency to rely predominantly on only a few types of debt). Motivated by theoretical and empirical research that supports a strong link between debt concentration and creditors' coordination costs and the importance of accounting quality in reducing these costs, we hypothesize that firms with higher accounting quality have less concentrated debt structures. Measuring accounting quality with a comprehensive index based on the occurrence of material internal control weaknesses, accounting restatements, SEC AAERs, and firms' reliance on small auditors, we find that higher accounting quality is indeed associated with less concentrated debt structures. This relation is stronger for firms with higher default risk, as the probability that creditors need to coordinate is higher, and for firms with lower liquidation values, as creditor coordination to avoid liquidation is more important.

SOX 404, Auditor Effort, and the Prevention of Financial Report Misstatements

2017 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 151-177 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuping Zhao ◽  
Jean C. Bedard ◽  
Rani Hoitash
Keyword(s):  
Internal Control ◽  
Lower Incidence ◽  
Audit Fees ◽  
Data Availability ◽  
Section 404 ◽  
Financial Report ◽  
Auditor Tenure ◽  
Sarbanes Oxley ◽  
Big 4 ◽  
Jel Classifications

SUMMARY Prior research shows that the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) Section 404(b) integrated audit is associated with a lower incidence of misstatements. We predict that under 404(b), the auditor's ability to detect misstatements increases relative to other internal control regimes when greater resources are exerted during the engagement. Supporting this prediction, we find that the benefits of 404(b) versus other regimes (including SOX 404(a)) in reducing misstatements increase with incremental audit effort (proxied by abnormal audit fees). We find no benefit of 404(b) in misstatement reduction when abnormal audit effort is low. This implies that the value of 404(b) testing is not uniform, but rather is greater when sufficient resources are available to thoroughly understand client controls. In contrast, we find no benefit of abnormal audit effort under other regulatory regimes. We further examine the conditions under which knowledge gained from auditor internal control testing is more valuable. We find that the benefits of increased audit effort under 404(b) do not vary across internal control regimes under AS2 versus AS5, and are more pronounced for engagements with shorter auditor tenure, non-Big 4 auditors, and industry-specialist auditors. JEL Classifications: M49. Data Availability: Data used in this study are available from public sources.

Economic Determinants and Consequences of the Proactive Disclosure of Internal Control Weaknesses and Remediation Progress in IPOs

2017 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sudipta Basu ◽  
Jagan Krishnan ◽  
Jong Eun Lee ◽  
Yinqi Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Internal Control ◽  
Audit Committees ◽  
Litigation Risk ◽  
Due Diligence ◽  
Ipo Underpricing ◽  
Going Public ◽  
Economic Determinants ◽  
Sarbanes Oxley ◽  
Internal Control Weaknesses ◽  
Jel Classifications

SUMMARY This study investigates (1) why some IPO firms proactively disclose internal control weaknesses (ICWs) and remediation progress in their prospectuses before going public, despite being exempt from the requirements of Sections 302 and 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act at the time of IPO, and (2) the association of such disclosures with IPO underpricing (i.e., the first-day return). We find that IPO firms that proactively disclose ICWs and remediation progress have higher litigation risk, are audited by industry specialist auditors, and are more likely to have audit committees prior to the IPO, compared with firms that do not disclose such information, after controlling for the ex ante probability of having ICWs. IPO underpricing is lower for firms that disclose ICWs and remediation progress, consistent with the conjecture that the disclosure of ICWs and remediation progress signals extensive premarket due diligence, thus reducing the information asymmetry between informed and uninformed investors. JEL Classifications: G24; K22; M13; M41; M42; M49.

Accounting Adjustments and the Valuation of Financial Statement Note Information in 10-K Filings

2011 ◽  
Vol 86 (5) ◽  
pp. 1577-1604 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gus De Franco ◽  
M. H. Franco Wong ◽  
Yibin Zhou
Keyword(s):  
Stock Returns ◽  
Stock Prices ◽  
Data Availability ◽  
Financial Statement ◽  
Target Price ◽  
Equity Analysts ◽  
Jel Classifications

ABSTRACT We examine the valuation of financial statement note information at the time of 10-K filings. We find that stock returns around 10-K filings are positively related to accounting adjustments calculated from financial statement note information. We further document that the likelihood of equity analysts issuing a report and updating their target price estimates at the 10-K dates is increasing in the magnitude of the adjustments. Those analysts who do update their target prices at this time revise their estimates consistent with the sign and magnitude of the adjustments. These findings are consistent with financial statement users utilizing financial statement note information to make accounting adjustments, thereby incorporating this information into stock prices. JEL Classifications: G14, G29, M40, M41, M44. Data Availability: All data are publicly available from the sources identified in the article.

Audit Partner Tenure and Cost of Equity Capital

2012 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 183-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
Masoud Azizkhani ◽  
Gary S. Monroe ◽  
Greg Shailer
Keyword(s):  
Equity Capital ◽  
Data Availability ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Cost Of Equity Capital ◽  
Cost Of Equity ◽  
Omitted Variables ◽  
Big 4 ◽  
Sensitivity Tests ◽  
Ex Ante ◽  
Nonlinear Relation

SUMMARY We examine whether audit engagement partner tenure and rotation affect investors' perceptions, as proxied by the ex ante cost of equity capital. We find that partner tenure has a nonlinear relation with the ex ante cost of equity capital for non-Big 4 audit engagements prior to the introduction of partner rotation requirements, and that the imputed gains from partner tenure appear similar to the imputed gains of having a Big 4 auditor. Consistent with the tenure results, we also find that partner rotation is associated with increased ex ante cost of equity capital. Our results are very robust to a variety of sensitivity tests and raise important questions for future research. It is not known to what extent investors or analysts are aware of the audit partner's identity or pay attention to audit partner tenure; if investors or analysts do not consider partner tenure, future research may identify omitted variables that have the same nonlinear relationship with the ex ante cost of capital that we observe for non-Big 4 audit partner tenure. JEL Classifications: M42; M48. Data Availability: The data used are from public sources identified in the manuscript.

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