Business Commons^™

Audit Quality And Accrual Persistence: Evidence From The Pre- And Post-Sarbanes-Oxley Periods, Dennis Chambers, Jeff L. Payne

Faculty and Research Publications

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is two-fold: first, to examine whether the quality of accruals, as measured by accrual persistence, improved in the post-Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) period, and second, to examine the degree to which SOX-related improvement in accrual persistence varies across companies depending on the degree of their auditor's independence.

Design/methodology/approach – The paper compares accrual persistence in the pre- and post-SOX periods to test the first question. Then, partitioning on relative client importance as a measure of auditor independence, the paper compares the SOX-based improvement for clients of low and high independence audit firms.

Findings – The …