The Discovery and Consequences of Internal Control Deficiencies Prior to SOX-Mandated Audits

I used ICD disclosures prior to mandated internal control to investigate economic factors that expose firms to control failures and management's incentives to discover and report control problems. I find that, relative to non-disclosing, firms disclosing ICDs have more complex operations, recent organizational  changes, greater accounting risk, more auditor resignations and have fewer resourses available for internal audit control. Regarding incentives to discover and report internal control problems, ICD firms have more prior SEC enforcement actions and financial restatements,are more likely to use a dominaunt audit firm, and have more concentrated institutional ownership.