Assessing the Success of Sarbanes-Oxley

Regulation and Sarbanes-Oxley

Many of the papers in this special issue are concerned with regulation and some with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX). In this commentary, I will begin by summarizing the arguments for regulation that have been made in the literature.1 I will then consider whether these arguments apply to SOX. I will suggest that, rather than being based on sound principles, regulation often seems to be a consequen...

Holistic Compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley

The theory underlying US securities laws is that investors are helpless without reliable information [Zelizer, 2002]. When Enron's collapse and other corporate frauds made it clear that "practically every element of our system of safeguards failed until it was too late to repair the damage," Congress reinforced those laws by passing the Sarbanes-Oxley (SARBOX) Act [O'Malley, 2002]. This new law...

Why Sarbanes-Oxley Whistleblowers Don’t Win

Sarbanes-Oxley: What About all the Spreadsheets?

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 has finally forced corporations to examine the validity of their spreadsheets. They are beginning to understand the spreadsheet error literature, including what it tells them about the need for comprehensive spreadsheet testing. However, controlling for fraud will require a completely new set of capabilities, and a great deal of new research will be needed to deve...

Guidelines for Compliance with Sarbanes-oxley

Over the past few years, cases of miserable failure in corporate governance have shocked the financial world. Enron and WorldCom are just two examples of how a few people in a position of power can cause unprecedented damage to hundreds of thousands of people, including investors, employees, and retirees. Lessons thus learned created a wave of regulations, the most significant being the Sarba...