The stock market convulsions and corporate scandals of 2001 and 2002 have reignited debate on the purposes of the corporation and, in particular, the goal of shareholder value maximization. We revisit the debate, re-examine the traditional rationales, and develop a set of new arguments for why the preferred objective function for the corporation must unambiguously continue to be the one that sa...

The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the conviction of Arthur Andersen, LLP for its involvement in the Enron scandal. The Court held that that the jury instructions did not accurately convey the meaning of the witness tampering statute that Andersen was charged with. Since the original trial, relevant sections of the Criminal Code were updated with the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (2002). Alt...

This paper investigates the effect of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (hereafter, SOX) on the compensation structure and the risk-taking incentives of CEOs as revealed by their research and development expenses and capital expenditures. We hypothesize that firms will respond to the additional liability imposed by SOX on corporate executives by altering the mix of incentive compensation to fixed salary a...

We document that the period following the passage of the Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) is associated with a significant reduction in compensation-based incentives to take risk, which is related to a decline in risky investments. Moreover, consistent with the rules in SOX directly affecting CEOs’ incentives to take risk, we document that the decline in risky investments exceeds the amount tha...

=1204442. DUARTE, J.; K. KONG; L. A. YOUNG; AND S. SIEGEL. “Foreign Listings, U.S. Equity Markets, and the Impact of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, 2007. Working paper, University of Washington, 2007. ENGEL, E.; R. M. HAYES; AND X. WANG. “The Sarbanes–Oxley Act and Firms’ Going-Private Decisions.” Journal of Accounting & Economics 44 (2007): 116–45.FAMA, E., AND K. FRENCH. “Common Risk Factors in ...

The 2001 to 2002 corporate scandals led to the Sarbanes–Oxley Act and to various amendments to the U.S. stock exchanges’ regulations. We find that the announcement of these rules has a significant effect on firm value. Firms that are less compliant with the provisions of the rules earn positive abnormal returns compared to firms that are more compliant. We also find variation in the response ac...

Scholars praise the whistleblower protections of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 as one of the most protective anti-retaliation provisions i n the world. Yet, during its first three years, only 3.6% of Sarbanes-Oxley whistleblowers won relief through the initial administrative process that adjudicates such claims, and only 6.5% of whistleblowers won appeals through the process. This Article repo...

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...