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Does the Public Disclosure of the SEC’s Oversight Actions Matter?

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  • Ormazabal, Gaizka
  • Duro, Miguel
  • Heese, Jonas

Abstract

This paper studies the effect of the public disclosure of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)’s oversight activity on firms’ financial reporting. We exploit a major change in the SEC’s disclosure policy: in 2004, the SEC decided to make its comment-letter reviews publicly available. Using a novel dataset of SEC comment letters (CLs), we analyze the capital-market responses to firms’ quarterly earnings releases during SEC reviews conducted before and after the policy change. We find that these responses increase significantly following the policy change. Consistent with public disclosure of CLs increasing market discipline, we find that this relative increase is stronger among firms with higher percentages of dedicated institutional investors or independent directors. In contrast, we do not find conclusive evidence that public disclosure of CLs increases SEC oversight intensity. Corroborating these results, we also document a set of changes firms make to their accounting reports during these reviews. Our results indicate that the public disclosure of regulatory oversight activities can enhance the effect of these activities.

Suggested Citation

  • Ormazabal, Gaizka & Duro, Miguel & Heese, Jonas, 2017. "Does the Public Disclosure of the SEC’s Oversight Actions Matter?," CEPR Discussion Papers 12145, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:12145
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    Cited by:

    1. Ormazabal, Gaizka, 2018. "The Role of Stakeholders in Corporate Governance: A View from Accounting Research," CEPR Discussion Papers 12775, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Disclosure rules; Sec comment letters; Sec oversight;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • M41 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Accounting - - - Accounting

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