Changes in Discretionary Financial Reporting Behavior following the Sarbanes-Oxley Act
研究了萨班斯-奥克斯利法案（SOX）对上市公司财务报告激进或保守程度的影响，发现SOX后公司更倾向于保守报告，且对之前激进的公司影响更大。
We examine the effect of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) on the extent of aggressive versus conservative reporting behavior of public companies. SOX imposes considerably greater potential penalties on chief executive officers (CEOs) and chief financial officers (CFOs) who engage in financial wrongdoing. Therefore, risk-averse managers are likely to report lower earnings by reducing discretionary accruals following SOX. Our results, based on a matched sample of dual-listed Canadian firms and their domestically listed counterparts, indicate that (1) firms subject to SOX are more conservative in financial reporting in the post-SOX period as evidenced by lower signed discretionary accruals, the Ball and Shivakumar (2005) conditional conservatism measure, and the Penman and Zhang (2002) unconditional conservatism measure; and (2) the impact of SOX on firms' conservative reporting through discretionary accruals in the post-SOX period is not homogeneous—that is, it is more pronounced for firms that were aggressive in the pre-SOX period.