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A re‐examination of accruals quality following restatements
Author(s) -
Herly Marie,
Bartholdy Jan,
Thinggaard Frank
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
journal of business finance and accounting
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.282
H-Index - 77
eISSN - 1468-5957
pISSN - 0306-686X
DOI - 10.1111/jbfa.12445
Subject(s) - accrual , materiality (auditing) , business , accounting , quality (philosophy) , quality audit , control (management) , stock (firearms) , sample (material) , affect (linguistics) , empirical evidence , audit , economics , psychology , earnings , engineering , mechanical engineering , philosophy , chemistry , epistemology , management , chromatography , communication , aesthetics
Empirical research from the first years following the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act (SOX) in the US suggests that firms improve accruals quality following restatements, but the materiality of restatements has declined since then. This decline may affect firms' responses to restatements, and hence we re‐examine whether restatements are associated with subsequent improvements in accruals quality in a more recent sample. We compare the changes in accruals quality of firms restating between 2000 and 2014 with that of a control group. We do not find that firms improve accruals quality more than the control group following a restatement, even when we isolate the types of restatements considered to be most material. However, we do find that restatements followed by the most negative stock market reactions are associated with a relative increase in accruals quality, indicating that only restatements deemed very severe by investors lead to subsequent improvements in accruals quality. Our results suggest that firms' responses to restatements have changed concurrently with the trend of fewer and less material restatements in recent years.