Judicial Branch. We thank John Jiang for generously providing us the SAS code for computing executive incentives. We thank the Abstract We examine the influence of general counsel on firms' accounting quality and earnings management practices. We consider two views of the role of general counsel and how they relate to financial reporting. The first is the " gatekeeper " role in which the genera...

We provide evidence on the long standing concern on auditor conflicts of interest from providing non-audit services (NAS) to audit clients by using rarely explored NAS fee data from 1978-80. Using this earlier setting, we find cross-sectional evidence of improved earnings quality when auditors provide NAS, especially those related to information services. This is consistent with better audit qu...

As mobile devices have been popular, many wireless applications for mobile devices have been developed. One of applications is to represent financial transaction report for a product such as online game. This paper presents the architecture of financial transaction report system of an online game on WAP with J2EE and WML as a case study. The implemented system provides transactional report by f...

We study the role of executive functional background in explaining management discretion in financial reporting. Taking goodwill impairment as our reporting setting, we focus on top executives (CEOs and CFOs) whose employment history includes experience in investment banking, private equity, venture capital or management consulting, as we expect these executives to have unique human capital and...

We study the influence of a major reform in financial reporting regulation on financing decisions. Across a battery of tests, we document an increase in the issuance of external financing around the new regime. Further, firms make different financing decisions around the new regulation depending on their ex-ante debt capacity, allowing them to adjust their capital structure. Our results are acc...

XBRL is a computer language add-on that facilitates the rendering of financial information. Its development has been accompanied by claims that XBRL will, among other things, lead to continuous reporting and eliminate financial reporting differences including differences between jurisdictional GAAP. These discussions have largely ignored the literature on voluntary disclosures and earnings mana...

We examine the association between employee quality and financial reporting outcomes. Using the average workforce education level in MSA(s) where the firm operates as a proxy for employee quality, we find that firms with a high-quality workforce exhibit higher accruals quality, fewer internal control violations, and fewer restatements. These firms also issue superior management forecasts, in te...