IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/24513.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The dark side of 'good' corporate governance: compliance-fuelled book-cooking activities

Author

Listed:
  • Kirchmaier, Thomas
  • Selvaggi, Mariano

Abstract

We argue on theoretical grounds that obligatory compliance with stricter financial reporting rules (e.g. the US Sabanes-Oxley Act) may entail important unintended consequences. Paradoxically, the amount of misreporting may increase because corporate boards spend more valuable resources fulfilling statutory mandates rather than involving themselves in forward-looking strategy setting, As these surveillance devices are substitute methods of gauging management quality, when boards focus on the firm's internal control and accounting system they become semi-detached from strategy - their business acumen falters. Top executives are then judged primarily on the basis of financial metrics as opposed to long-term fit. Since the balance sheet review carries more weight in the board's decision-making process, the return to managerial book-cooking (a purely influence activity) and the risk of endorsing flawed business plans swell. This confirms a burgeoning sentiment among business leaders and scholars that boards should perhaps pay less rather than more heed to codified, verifiable 'good ' governance principles.

Suggested Citation

  • Kirchmaier, Thomas & Selvaggi, Mariano, 2006. "The dark side of 'good' corporate governance: compliance-fuelled book-cooking activities," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 24513, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:24513
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/24513/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nahum D. Melumad & Dilip Mookherjee, 1989. "Delegation as Commitment: The Case of Income Tax Audits," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 20(2), pages 139-163, Summer.
    2. Dilip Mookherjee & Ivan Png, 1989. "Optimal Auditing, Insurance, and Redistribution," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 104(2), pages 399-415.
    3. Fahad Khalil, 1997. "Auditing Without Commitment," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 28(4), pages 629-640, Winter.
    4. Julio Rotemberg & Garth Saloner, 2000. "Visionaries, Managers, and Strategic Direction," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 31(4), pages 693-716, Winter.
    5. Mike Burkart & Denis Gromb & Fausto Panunzi, 1997. "Large Shareholders, Monitoring, and the Value of the Firm," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(3), pages 693-728.
    6. Holmstrom, Bengt & Milgrom, Paul, 1991. "Multitask Principal-Agent Analyses: Incentive Contracts, Asset Ownership, and Job Design," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 7(0), pages 24-52, Special I.
    7. Graetz, Michael J & Reinganum, Jennifer F & Wilde, Louis L, 1986. "The Tax Compliance Game: Toward an Interactive Theory of Law Enforcement," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 2(1), pages 1-32, Spring.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Thierry Pénard & Saïd Souam, 2002. "Collusion et politique de la concurrence en information asymétrique," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 66, pages 209-233.
    2. M. Martin Boyer, 2004. "Overcompensation as a Partial Solution to Commitment and Renegotiation Problems: The Case of Ex Post Moral Hazard," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 71(4), pages 559-582, December.
    3. Leandro Arozamena & Martin Besfamille & Pablo Sanguinetti, 2010. "Optimal taxes and penalties when the government cannot commit to its audit policy," Department of Economics Working Papers 2010-10, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella.
    4. Kuhn, Michael & Siciliani, Luigi, 2013. "Manipulation and auditing of public sector contracts," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 251-267.
    5. Heiko Gerlach, 2013. "Self-Reporting, Investigation, and Evidentiary Standards," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 56(4), pages 1061-1090.
    6. M. Martin Boyer, 2007. "Resistance (to Fraud) Is Futile," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 74(2), pages 461-492, June.
    7. Jean-Marc Bourgeon & Pierre Picard, 2014. "Fraudulent Claims and Nitpicky Insurers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(9), pages 2900-2917, September.
    8. Kalina Koleva, 2005. "Seeking for an optimal tax administration: the efficiency costs’ approach [A la recherche de l'administration fiscale optimale : l'approche par les coûts d'efficience]," Post-Print halshs-00195354, HAL.
    9. Martin Pollrich, 2017. "Mediated audits," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 48(1), pages 44-68, March.
    10. Bayer, Ralph-C., 2006. "A contest with the taxman - the impact of tax rates on tax evasion and wastefully invested resources," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 50(5), pages 1071-1104, July.
    11. Martin Besfamille & Pablo Olmos, 2010. "Inspectors or Google Earth? Optimal fiscal policies under uncertain detection of evaders," Department of Economics Working Papers 2010-09, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella.
    12. Kalina Koleva, 2005. "A la recherche de l'administration fiscale optimale : l'approche par les coûts d'efficience," Cahiers de la Maison des Sciences Economiques r05050, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1).
    13. Nicolas Boccard & Patrick Legros, 2017. "Audit Competition in Insurance Oligopolies," Frontiers of Economics in China-Selected Publications from Chinese Universities, Higher Education Press, vol. 12(3), pages 371-399, September.
    14. Khalil, Fahad & Lawarree, Jacques, 2001. "Catching the agent on the wrong foot: ex post choice of monitoring," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(3), pages 327-347, December.
    15. Georges Dionne & Florence Giuliano & Pierre Picard, 2009. "Optimal Auditing with Scoring: Theory and Application to Insurance Fraud," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 55(1), pages 58-70, January.
    16. Guillaume Roger, 2013. "Optimal Contract under Moral Hazard with Soft Information," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(4), pages 55-80, November.
    17. Pierre Picard, 2012. "Economic Analysis of Insurance Fraud," Working Papers hal-00725561, HAL.
    18. Roland Strausz, 2001. "Mitigating Non-Contractability with Interim Randomization," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 157(2), pages 231-245, June.
    19. Martin Besfamille & Cecilia Parlatore Siritto, 2009. "Modernization of Tax Administrations and Optimal Fiscal Policies," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 11(6), pages 897-926, December.
    20. Strausz, Roland, 2006. "Buried in paperwork: Excessive reporting in organizations," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 60(4), pages 460-470, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    corporate governance; earnings manipulation; auditing; misreporting; Sarbanes-oxley act; combined code on corporate governance;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • M21 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Economics - - - Business Economics
    • K20 - Law and Economics - - Regulation and Business Law - - - General
    • G30 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - General
    • M40 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Accounting - - - General
    • D23 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Organizational Behavior; Transaction Costs; Property Rights

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:24513. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.