Academic Research on Regulation S-X

• The aggregation problem in financial statements: An informational approach, Lev, B. (1968). Journal of Accounting Research, 247-261. For the purpose of reporting, the companies aggregate a large number of individual balances in their financial statements. This paper assumes that in principle, the users would like to have a detailed report rather than this aggregated report and this aggregation results in a loss of information for them. This paper attempts to measure this loss and to design a method to minimize it. 
• Public (US) compared to private (UK) regulation of corporate financial disclosure, Benston, G. J. (1976). The Accounting Review, 51(3), 483-498. The United States depends on the public regulation of financial disclosure (The Securities and Exchange Commission), whereas the United Kingdom relies on private regulation (The Stock Exchange). This paper compares these two systems in terms of costs and benefits and concludes private regulation is better in many important respects. 
• Lost in translation: Detecting tax shelter activity in financial statements, McGill, G. A., & Outslay, E. (2004). National Tax Journal, 739-756. This paper explains the method of determining a company's tax payment and its involvement in "tax shelter" by analyzing the data provided in the "income tax note". The paper uses specific examples to explain the method and identifies the limitations of using the financial statement data in tax issues. It recommends enhanced disclosure to increase transparency in tax-related issues.
• Disclosure requirements under federal securities regulation, Heller, H. (1960). Bus. Law., 16, 300. This essay discusses the theory and purpose of disclosure under the Securities Act of 1933 and Securities Exchange Act of 1934. It mostly remarks on the Securities Act, but those are also applicable to the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.
• Financial reporting in US capital markets: International demensions, Sutton, M. H. (1997). Accounting Horizons, 11(2), 96. This is a commentary by Michael H. Sutton, Chief Accountant of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. It gives an overview of the role played by the SEC in financial reporting and discusses its rule-making and interpretive authority. The working relationship between the private sector standard-setting bodies and SEC is discussed at some length and in this context, the paper discusses the future of efforts to harmonize international accounting. 
• Financial statement disaggregation decisions and auditors' tolerance for misstatement, Libby, R., & Brown, T. (2012). The Accounting Review, 88(2), 641-665. This study investigates whether the provision of voluntary disaggregation of income statement number leads to improved reliability of income statement subtotals. The study finds the experienced auditors require correction of small errors in disaggregated numbers. The auditors expect extra SEC scrutiny of uncorrected financial statement errors when the disaggregation is more. This effect can be mitigated considerably by presenting the disaggregated numbers in the notes. The participants expressed different views on whether disaggregated numbers are to be considered as relevant materiality benchmarks and the requirement of the current auditing guidance. From these observations, the paper concludes there is a potential deficiency in current audit guidance. It also suggests the voluntary disaggregation positively affects (unintentionally) the reliability of income statement subtotals. 
• Debt Reporting by Parent Companies: ParentOnly Versus Consolidated Statements, Francis, J. R. (1986). Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, 13(3), 393-403. This article attempts to identify the differences between the Parent-only debt reporting and consolidated statements, and it does a comparative study between these two.
• What can we infer about a firm's taxable income from its financial statements?, Hanlon, M. (2003).National Tax Journal, 831-863. This paper presents an assessment of the income tax disclosure requirements in the financial statements of the companies. It argues these disclosures and income tax expenses are inadequate for estimating a firm's actual tax liabilities and taxable income and identifies many problems in this regard. It describes the conditions under which the information provided in the financial statement helps to estimate the taxable income most accurately and when the estimation becomes difficult. 
• Disclosure regulations and the cost of capital, Dhaliwal, D. S. (1979). Southern Economic Journal, 785-794. This paper investigates the effect of disclosure regulations on the cost of capital of the concerned firms. It conducts an empirical study to asses the impact of SEC's requirement to report by line-of-business on the cost of equity capital.
• The regulation of accountants and public accounting before and after Enron, Benston, G. J. (2003). Emory LJ, 52, 1325. This paper analyzes the regulations concerning accountants and public accounting before and after the incident of the Enron scandal. It is a scandal that led to the enactment of the SarbanesOxley Act of 2002.
• Company size, listed versus unlisted stocks, and the extent of financial disclosure, Buzby, S. L. (1975). Journal of accounting research, 16-37. The adequacy of disclosure varies from one company to another depending on various factors and sometimes this variation is significant. This paper conducts a study to estimate how each of these factors affects the adequacy of disclosure in annual reports. It attempts to assess the relationship between a subcomponent of adequate disclosure- to which extent this component is present in corporate annual reports and two characteristics of a company. These characteristics are the size of the company and its listing status.
• Financial reporting for regulatory agencies, Barr, A. (1958). Journal of Accountancy (pre-1986), 105(000002), 26. This paper discusses the requirement of financial reporting by the SEC and its amendments. It tries to assess whether the regulatory agency is moving in the right direction.