Capital Structure, Earnings Management, and Sarbanes-Oxley: Evidence from Canadian and U.S. Firms

I particularly thank Terry Shevlin (co-editor) and an anonymous referee for their detailed, excellent comments, which greatly improved this paper. I also thank Alexander Butler, Laura Field, Delroy Hunter, Ninon Kohers Sutton, Patrick J. Kelly, and Jianping Qi for their valuable feedback. In addition, I thank Scott Besley, Matthew Billett, Jonathan Clarke, George Comer, Shane Johnson, Norris Larrymore, Micah Officer, Phyllis Keys, Christopher K. C. Ma, Van Thuan Nguyen, Russell Price, Laura Starks, Huey-Lian Sun, Alex Tang, Sheela Thiruvadi, Terry Walter, and seminar participants at the University of South Florida, Morgan State University, Stetson University, the 2010 Southwestern Finance Association meetings, the 2011 American Accounting Association Southeast Regional Meeting, the 2011 American Accounting Association Annual Meeting, and the 2011 Financial Management Association Annual Meeting for helpful comments. Furthermore, I thank the organizing committees of the 2010 Southern Finance Association meetings and the 2010 Australasian Banking and Finance Conference for selecting this paper for presentation, although I was unable to attend. I am responsible for all remaining errors.

This paper has circulated under the titles “Capital Structure, Earnings Management, and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act” and “Capital Structure Behavior of Domestic and Cross-Listed Firms: Evidence from the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.” Much of this work was completed while I was at the University of South Florida.