The passage of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act (SOX) marks the beginning of the mandatory disclosure
of audit-committee composition and other corporate governance information for cross-listed foreign
firms. We posit that the provisions of SOX improve the effectiveness of an independent audit
committee and other corporate-governance functions in monitoring the earnings quality of crosslisted
foreign firms, and we use cross-listed firms' earnings informativeness and earnings
management to measure earnings quality. Our findings show earnings informativeness is
significantly associated with audit-committee independence as well as with board independence in
the post-SOX period. In contrast, we do not find a significant association between earnings
informativeness and audit-committee independence in the pre-SOX period. Our findings also show a
consistently negative association between earnings management and audit-committee independence
after SOX, an association that is not found in the pre-SOX period. Similarly, a negative association
between earnings informativeness and the CEO duality as the chair of the board is only found in the
post-SOX period. Furthermore, our results show a positive (negative) association between earnings
informativeness (earnings management) and an aggregate corporate-governance score as a measure
of overall corporate-governance functions in both the pre- and post-SOX periods. Our findings on
the change of magnitude in the relationship between earnings informativeness (earnings manage