Are Lessons Well Learned? Evidence from SEC Enforcement Releases

I appreciate the helpful comments and suggestions from Brian D. Cadman (editor) and two anonymous reviewers. I gratefully acknowledge the invaluable advice of Yuping Jia and Yachang Zeng on various aspects of this study. I thank Annette Beatty (the discussant), Bart Dierynck, Frank Ecker, Michael Erkens, Stephan Hollander, Katharina Hombach, Jacob Jaggi (the discussant), Xue Jia, Nico Lehmann, Laurence van Lent, Edith Leung, Mengfan Liu, Matthias Mahlendorf, Linda Myers, Caspar Peter, Jingwen Zhang, Ruishen Zhang, and Zhifang Zhang for helpful comments. I also thank seminar participants at Aalto University, The Australian National University, Copenhagen Business School, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Frankfurt School of Finance & Management, IESE Business School, KU Leuven, Saïd Business School, Tilburg University, University of Groningen, and The University of Melbourne and participants at the 2016 20th Financial Reporting and Business Communication Conference, 2017 American Accounting Association (AAA) Annual Meeting, 2018 Annual Accounting Conference, 2018 European Accounting Association (EAA) Annual Congress, and the 2018 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Asia Conference in Accounting for their helpful comments and suggestions. I do not have any conflicts of interest related to this research.

All errors are my own.

Wenjiao Cao, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Erasmus School of Economics, Department of Accounting, Auditing and Control, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

Supplemental material is available online, as linked in the text.

Editor’s note: Accepted by Brian D. Cadman, under the Senior Editorship of W. Robert Knechel.