Most researchers question SOX’s effect on earnings quality. Ahmed et al. (2006)
address whether audit committee independence, strength of corporate governance, and
relative significance of the client will influence earnings management. They find that there
is not much difference in audit committee independence pre-SOX, and uncover that strong
corporate governance reduce the risk of client significance affecting earnings reporting.
Unlike most previous studies using firm-level, Ahmed et al. (2006) evaluate client
significance at the local-office level with signed abnormal accruals.