No abstract

We study the frequency of restatements by foreign firms listed on US exchanges. We find that the restatement rate of US listed foreign firms is significantly lower than that of comparable US firms and that the difference depends on the firm's home country characteristics. Foreign firms from countries with a weak rule of law are less likely to restate than are firms from strong rule of law countries. While the lower rate of restatements can represent an absence of errors, it can also indicate a lack of detection and disclosure of errors and irregularities. We infer the effect of detection and disclosure by associating the frequency of restatements with the quality of the firm's internal control system. We find that only US firms and foreign firms from strong rule of law countries show a positive association between restatement frequency and internal control weaknesses. Firms from weak rule of law countries show no significant association. We interpret these findings as home country enforcement affecting firms' likelihood of detecting and reporting existing accounting misstatements. This suggests that for US listed foreign firms, less frequent restatements can be a signal of opportunistic reporting rather than a lack of accounting errors and irregularities.

This study examines the impact of director tenure diversity on board effectiveness. We find that tenure‐diverse boards exhibit significantly higher CEO performance‐turnover sensitivity and that firms with tenure‐diverse audit committees are less likely to experience accounting restatements. Furthermore, we document that tenure‐diverse compensation committees also award less excess compensation and are less likely to overcompensate. Even though tenure‐diverse boards seem to exhibit superior monitoring performance, there is limited evidence that their firms exhibit superior financial performance. The findings suggest that recent calls for board renewal, to the extent that it would increase tenure diversity rather than just decrease average board tenure, may help enhance board monitoring.

Do differences in countries' accounting standards affect global investment decisions? We explore this question by examining how accounting distance, the difference in the accounting standards used in the investor's and the investee's countries, affects the asset allocation decisions of global mutual funds. We find that investors tend to underweight investees with greater accounting distance. Using the mandatory adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) as an event that changed the accounting standards of various country-pairs, we examine how two sources of changes in accounting distance -(i) changes due to IFRS adoption of the investee and (ii) changes due to IFRS adoption in the investor's country -affect global portfolio allocation decisions. We find that the tendency to underinvest in investees with greater accounting distance significantly weakens when accounting distance is reduced either from an investee's IFRS adoption or from IFRS adoption in the investor's country. The latter finding holds despite the fact that IFRS adoption in the investor's country had no impact on the accounting standards under which the investee firms present their financial information; the only change is in the investor's familiarity with these standards. This suggests that differences in accounting standards affect investor demand by imposing greater information-processing costs on those less familiar with the reporting standards.* The paper is a revised version of Gwen Yu's Ph. D. dissertation, previously titled "Accounting Standards and International Portfolio Holdings: An Analysis of Mutual Fund Holdings Following Mandatory Adoption of IFRS." We are grateful to Bin Ke (the editor) and an anonymous reviewer for their excellent suggestions. We thank Russ

Do differences in countries' accounting standards affect global investment decisions? We explore this question by examining how accounting distance, the difference in the accounting standards used in the investor's and the investee's countries, affects the asset allocation decisions of global mutual funds. We find that investors tend to underweight investees with greater accounting distance. Using the mandatory adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) as an event that changed the accounting standards of various country-pairs, we examine how two sources of changes in accounting distance -(i) changes due to IFRS adoption of the investee and (ii) changes due to IFRS adoption in the investor's country -affect global portfolio allocation decisions. We find that the tendency to underinvest in investees with greater accounting distance significantly weakens when accounting distance is reduced either from an investee's IFRS adoption or from IFRS adoption in the investor's country. The latter finding holds despite the fact that IFRS adoption in the investor's country had no impact on the accounting standards under which the investee firms present their financial information; the only change is in the investor's familiarity with these standards. This suggests that differences in accounting standards affect investor demand by imposing greater information-processing costs on those less familiar with the reporting standards.* The paper is a revised version of Gwen Yu's Ph. D. dissertation, previously titled "Accounting Standards and International Portfolio Holdings: An Analysis of Mutual Fund Holdings Following Mandatory Adoption of IFRS." We are grateful to Bin Ke (the editor) and an anonymous reviewer for their excellent suggestions. We thank Russ