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This paper investigates the economic consequences of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act through a study of market reactions to legislative events related to the Act. I find that the cumulative abnormal return around all legislative events leading to the passage of the Act is significantly negative. The loss in total market value around the most significant rulemaking events amounts to $1.4 trillion. I then examine the private benefits and costs of major provisions of the Act by investigating the cross-sectional variation in market reactions to the rulemaking events. Regression results are consistent with the hypothesis that shareholders consider both the restriction of nonaudit services and the provisions to enhance corporate governance costly to business. The results also show that Section 404 of SOX, which mandates an internal control test, imposes significant costs on firms.1

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The paper examines the reaction of market participants to the announcement of a goodwill impairment loss, the nature of the information conveyed by the loss, and whether a cause of goodwill impairment can be traced back to overpayment for targets at the time of prior acquisitions. Our evidence suggests that both investors and financial analysts revise their expectations downward on the announcement of an impairment loss. We find that the negative impact of the loss is significant under different reporting regimes, that is, pre-SFAS-142, transition period and post-SFAS-142, though it is lower in the post period. We further show that goodwill impairment serves as a leading indicator of a decline in future profitability. Our tests also reveal that proxies for overpayment for targets can predict the subsequent goodwill impairment. Indirect evidence suggests that firms with potentially impaired goodwill that did not report an impairment loss may have used their managerial discretion to avoid taking the loss.

During the past decade, new regulations have been adopted to improve audit committee effectiveness. Prior research has generally provided evidence in support of these regulations and suggests that a more independent and expert audit committee is more effective. We posit that CEO power reduces or even eliminates the improvements in audit committee effectiveness resulting from independent and financially expert committee members. Thus, CEO power may result in an audit committee that appears effective in form but is not in substance. We construct a composite index for CEO power by combining ten CEO characteristics and employ the incidence of internal control weaknesses as a proxy for audit committee monitoring quality. Since all the firms in our sample have completely independent audit committees, we use financial expertise to examine the impact of CEO power on audit committee effectiveness. We find that, when CEO power is low, audit committee financial expertise is negatively associated with the incidence of internal control weaknesses. However, as CEO power increases, this association monotonically weakens. When CEO power reaches a sufficiently high level, this association is no longer negative. The moderating effect of CEO power on audit committee effectiveness is more prominent when the CEO extracts more rents from the firm through insider trading. Our results are not driven by the CEO's involvement in director selection. Our paper suggests that more expert audit committees in form do not automatically translate into more effective monitoring. Rather, the substantive monitoring effectiveness of audit committees is contingent on CEO power. * Accepted by Dan A. Simunic. The authors thank Dan Simunic, Steven Salterio, two anonymous reviewers, le pouvoir du DG r eduit, voire neutralise l'am elioration de l'efficacit e des comit es d'audit attribuable a l'ind ependance et aux comp etences financi eres de ses membres. Ainsi, le pouvoir des DG pourrait faire en sorte que le comit e d'audit donne l'impression d'être efficace sans l'être v eritablement. Les auteurs cr eent un indice compos e relatif au pouvoir du DG en regroupant dix caract eristiques des DG, et ils utilisent l'incidence des lacunes du contrôle interne a titre de variable de substitution repr esentant la qualit e de la surveillance exerc ee par le comit e d'audit. Puisque toutes les soci et es de leur echantillon poss edent des comit es d'audit totalement ind ependants, ils utilisent les comp etences financi eres pour etudier l'incidence du pouvoir du DG sur l'efficacit e du comit e d'audit. Les auteurs constatent que, lorsque le pouvoir du DG est faible, les comp etences financi eres du comit e d'audit sont en relation n egative avec l'incidence des lacunes du contrôle interne. Toutefois, lorsque le pouvoir du DG augmente, cette relation s'att enue. Lorsque le pouvoir du DG atteint un niveau suffisamment elev e, la relation n'est plus n egative. L'effet mod erateur du pouvoir du DG sur l'efficacit e du comit e d'audit est plus marqu e lorsque le DG tire...