 On Litigation Risk and Disclosure Complexity: Evidence from Canadian Firms Cross-Listed in the USStuart L. Gillan and Christine A. Panasian The International Journal of Accounting, 2014, vol. 49, issue 4, 426-454 Abstract: We find that D&O insurance premiums for Canadian firms cross-listed in the US are more than twice those of Canadian-only listed firms, and audit fees are approximately 50% higher. While this supports the view that both service-providers view the US as a more litigious environment, our findings also suggest that these differentials for cross-listed firms reflect premia for both litigation risk and the complexity of firms' financial disclosures. In particular, we show that D&O liability insurers charge differently for cross-listed firms that have different levels of disclosure; while D&O premiums are significantly higher for all cross-listed firms, they increase and then decrease with increased disclosure complexity. In contrast, audit fees increase monotonically as the filing complexity increases. We also find that auditors appear to price abnormal premiums charged by D&O insurers. Thus, audit fee premia for cross-listed firms appear to capture aspects of both litigation risk and increased disclosure complexity. Keywords: Litigation; Disclosure; Audit fees; D&O liability insurance; Cross-listed (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:accoun:v:49:y:2014:i:4:p:426-454 DOI: 10.1016/j.intacc.2014.10.003 Access Statistics for this article The International Journal of Accounting is currently edited by A. R. Abdel-Khalik More articles in The International Journal of Accounting from Elsevier |
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