Research on the Sarbanes-Oxley act: an analysis of the english language journals

Abstract

The credibility crisis in the U.S. capital market arising from various accounting scandals resulted in the publication of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) in July 2002, focused on defining a set of rules in order to certify the accuracy of accounting information. Since SOX is directly reflected in financial statements, it should be took as a subject of investigation by various researchers. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to examine the SOX studies published in accounting journals contained in the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) database on the list of journals with impact factor. Was selected eight accounting journals listed in ISI database on the list of journals with impact factor. The search included the period from 2002 to 2010 and reached a total of 23 papers in five journals. The research found that there is a concentration of publications related to SOX in the Journal of Accounting Research, Journal of Accounting & Economics and The Accounting Review. We found some homogeneity in the publications regardind the period and a group of six authors stood out from a total of 55 authors. From the 35 universities linked to the papers, 7 institutions deserve special mention in relation to the number of published researches. Internal control has been the most mentioned topic in the papers, including perspectives relating to internal control weaknesses, cost of equity, stock prices, quality of accruals and qualification and turnover of Chief Financial Officers.