Does Financial Statement Comparability Facilitate SEC Oversight?

Abstract

This study examines the impact of cross-firm financial statement comparability on regulatory oversight of accounting quality. Consistent with the notion that comparable accounting systems enhance regulators’ ability to identify accounting deviations from financial reporting, we find that the likelihood that the SEC issues a comment letter on 10-K filings that have poor accounting quality increases with financial statement comparability. Further analysis reveals that the regulatory benefits from financial statement comparability are more salient when the SEC faces higher monitoring constraints in filing reviews. Overall, we provide novel evidence suggesting that higher financial statement comparability improves the efficacy of the SEC’s oversight of accounting quality by reducing the information costs associated with cross-firm comparisons.