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Auditing is seasonal, with the majority of U.S. public companies having a December fiscal year-end. This results in an audit “busy season” and “off-season” with a non-trivial seasonal impact on the pricing of audit services. We apply an economic framework that explains how audit seasonality affects both the magnitude and the price elasticity of audit demand and audit supply. We find that the audit busy season is associated with an audit fee premium of approximately 10% based on a meta-analysis of 97 analyses from 18 audit fee studies of U.S public companies. A meta-regression of the contextual differences in research design between studies reveals that examining only Big N attenuates the busy season effect size but does not eliminate it, and that the busy season effect size may be larger post-SOX.

The purpose of this study is to analyze year-end spending practices in the European Economic Area (EEA) to baseline the pervasiveness of year-end spending spikes across countries in Europe.

The Tenders Electronic Daily dataset is used to descriptively analyze above-threshold procurement contracts by country, year and contract type from 2009 to 2018. Proportional distributions are employed to compare percentages of spend across quarters. Analyses are run within each country on the number of years displaying a fourth quarter spike, as well as within each country and contract type.

The results show that while spending spikes for above-threshold contracts in the final fiscal quarter are not consistent across all countries, patterns emerge when the data are disaggregated by country. The most populous nations in the EEA are more likely to have years with the highest proportion of fiscal spend occurring in the fourth quarter. Further, the type of contract makes a difference – services and supplies contracts are more likely to display fourth quarter spikes than works contracts.

This article provides the first analysis of the year-end spending spike across countries in Europe using procurement data, as well as the first to disaggregate by year and contract type. Findings support the literature on the presence of year-end spikes; such spikes exist even for above-threshold public procurement contracts.

Value relevance studies, in particular international comparative studies, use market values sampled at different dates relative to the fiscal year-end. This paper aims to contribute a theoretical and empirical analysis of the relationship between value relevance and the month of market value sampling.

The paper examines two components of value relevance, coincident relevance and forecast relevance, which the paper develops on the basis of the Ohlson model. The paper measures value relevance by estimating separate panel-data regressions for each of the 12 months around fiscal year-end. The sample consists of companies listed in two continental European countries, France and Germany, over the 1989-2008 period.

In both country panels, the paper finds that overall value relevance is higher when market value is sampled before or close to fiscal year-end, but incremental value relevance varies between domestic and International Financial Reporting (IFRS) accounting standards. Regression results reveal significant variations in coefficients over the following months of market value in French panel and its IFRS sub-sample only.

The scope of the study is limited to the average value relevance parameters of companies listed on stock exchanges in France and Germany. Future research may be devoted to other countries and study additional determinants of value relevance.

The study shows that the selection of the month of market value sampling can have significant impact on value relevance regression results. Therefore, sensitivity analysis needs to be included in research studies which rely on the value relevance approach.

The paper contributes the first systematic analysis of the variation in value relevance parameters in response to the selection of the month in which market value is sampled.

It is documented that companies and government agencies in the USA invest more in the fourth fiscal quarter without having higher investment opportunities. While previous studies focus on the agency conflicts and information asymmetry within organizations, this study is motivated by Scharfstein and Stein's (2000) two-tiered agency model and aims to examine how firms' external business environment affects the “fourth quarter effect.”

The authors implement this study in a sample of 41 countries and observe similar seasonality in firm investment as documented in the US market.

More importantly, using country characteristics, this study finds that firms from countries with better investor rights and protection, and more developed financial markets show less severe over-investment in the fourth fiscal quarter.

This paper contributes to the literature of law and finance, and the internal capital market, by investigating the quarterly investment patterns of firms from 41 countries. The authors find that similar to the results in earlier studies on the US market, firms in the global market increase their capital expenditure in the fourth fiscal quarter, indicating that the internal agency conflicts between the headquarters and divisional managers are widespread across the world. The authors also find that firms that operate in countries with higher investor rights and protection, and more developed financial markets, tend to show less severe “fourth quarter effect”.

This paper analyzes the impact of increased federal regulatory enforcement from the SEC's Municipalities Continuing Disclosure Cooperation (MCDC) initiative on municipal debt issuers continuing disclosure practices.

We analyze the changes in continuing disclosure practices by estimating a series of difference-in-differences regressions based on variables representing issuers' changes in regulatory risk after the MCDC. The continuing disclosure data are hand-collected for 827 cities over a seven-year period.

The empirical findings indicate that increased regulatory enforcement has a significant impact on continuing disclosure compliance. We find increased enforcement has no impact on issuers that already have a higher probability of being monitored by federal regulators. We also find that an increase in continuing disclosure compliance does not automatically increase continuing disclosure timeliness.

The MCDC lacks monetary penalties for noncompliant bond issuers and no direct regulatory consequences exist for untimely disclosure. Our findings suggest that regulatory enforcement should be followed by adequate sanctions to emphasize the credibility of the enforcement threat and the SEC should consider requiring bond issuers to commit to the timely disclosure of significant information in offering documents.

This paper extends prior studies by analyzing regulatory risk in the market, and the ability of regulation to reduce disclosure compliance deficiencies in the municipal market. By focusing on the MCDC, this study is able to disentangle the impact of regulatory enforcement from the changes in accounting regulation.

This study aims to assess the effect of material internal control weaknesses (MICW) on the relationship between ownership structures and future-oriented disclosure.

A total number of 197 firms were assessed in this study during 2014–2021. Two measures were used for MICW. First, the number of existing MICW was assessed in independent auditors’ reports. In Iran, the maximum number of weaknesses is 13. Second, the scoring (0 or 1) method was used as a dummy variable, 1 for a firm with MICW and otherwise 0. Moreover, the scoring (0 or 1) method was used to measure the level of future-oriented disclosure of 13 indicators.

The findings showed that institutional ownership and managerial ownership have a significant positive effect on future-oriented disclosure, whereas the MICW have a significant negative effect on future-oriented disclosure. In addition, MICW played a moderator role in the relationship between ownership structures and future-oriented disclosure. The robustness checks confirmed the results.

As the studies conducted on future-oriented disclosure and the contributing factors are limited, and also the effect of MICW on future-oriented disclosure is not explored, the present findings can show the importance of the study, and fill the gap in this field. This study offers theoretical and practical implications to drive policymakers and managers to the effectiveness of internal control and future-oriented transparency.

Given the absence of a formal forecasting model of property insurance surtax revenue for the state of Kentucky, this paper presents the insample and out-of-sample forecasts of four models: Holt linear trend algorithm, autoregressive model, linear trend/autoregressive model, and economic activity model based on annual fiscal year data from 1984 to 2001. The Holt linear trend algorithm and the linear trend/autoregressive model were reasonably close in their respective forecasting performance for both the in-sample and out-ofsample forecast horizons. However, the linear trend/autoregressive model exhibited some evidence of instability for the period 1992 to 1994. With respect to the out-of-sample forecasts, the Holt linear trend algorithm provided a better fit to the actual surtax data. Moreover, as time passes and additional data on the surtax becomes available, the models presented can easily be updated and reevaluated.

The present study investigates the impact of accounting comparability on chief executive officer (CEO) incentive plans and the moderating role of board independence for companies listed in Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE).

The information about 177 companies in 2014–2021 was examined. In this study, equity-based compensation and cash-based compensation were used as the CEO incentive plans. The equity-based compensation was calculated through the ownership of the CEO shares.

The results suggest that the higher accounting comparability increases not only CEO equity-based compensation, but also cash-based compensation. Board independence also strengthens the relationship between accounting comparability and CEO compensation. Hypothesis testing based on robustness checks confirmed these results.

The paper is pioneering, to the authors' knowledge, in identifying how board independence moderates the impact of accounting comparability on CEO compensation. The findings provide insights into economic consequences to the firm related to accounting comparability and board monitoring. The results have important practical implications for international investors to evaluate accounting comparability, corporate governance mechanisms and CEO incentives.

Recent studies document that approximately two-thirds of sample firms have at least one audit committee member serving on their compensation committee (Liao and Hsu, 2013). Prior studies on overlap membership document that presence of audit committee members on compensation committee affects the reporting quality. Since auditors’ audit risk is affected by reporting quality. The purpose of this paper is to examine how the auditors perceive the overlap of audit and compensation committee members when pricing audit fees.

The author use a sample from 2007 to 2012 and run an OLS regression.

The author find a negative association between overlap membership and audit fees. The results are robust after controlling for selection bias, alternate measurement of overlap membership, and an alternate pre- and post-overlap membership test. Additional tests show that the negative relationship between overlap membership and audit fees is explained by lower audit risk and not by lower brand premium of non-Big4 auditors and that the benefit of overlapping membership increases when the audit committee size is large.

The findings suggest that firms with large audit committee can improve their reporting and lower their audit fees by having audit committee members on compensation committee.

The findings contribute to the literature on the consequences of overlap membership and on the ongoing debate about the extent that common membership enhances audit committee monitoring. It also adds to the limited literature on audit committee and audit pricing.

The purpose of this research is to investigate post‐acquisition differences in share and operating performance, and in risk characteristics, for acquirers who pay cash versus those who employ stock, as well as for acquirers who merge with targets as opposed to those who directly approach target shareholders to tender their shares.

The paper uses event study methodologies, incorporating recent methodological advancements, to determine the effect of the acquisition by various classes of US acquirers during 1975 to 1996, on the variables of interest, by comparing these to a benchmark of similar firms who did not acquire any targets.

Mergers, especially in conjunction with cash payments, are risk increasing transactions. Equity risk increases for cash mergers over three years following acquisitions. Mergers experience a post‐acquisition increase in the intrinsic business risk, a decline in the degree of operating leverage and a small deterioration in the operating performance. Tender offers experience, no post‐acquisition changes in risk and performance metrics. The paper finds no evidence of post‐acquisition abnormal returns.

The results pertaining to market efficiency and the various hypotheses for method of payment and mode of acquisition contribute to academic research, where methodological issues have been identified as the sources of the conflicting results in prior studies. Differences due to mode of acquisition and method of payment would be of interest to investors and corporate managers as well.