DescriptionThe first essay investigates whether the implementation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems affects the audit repot lag, the time period between a company’s fiscal year end and the date of the audit report. Prior research has shown that the implementation of ERP systems can significantly affect a firm’s business operations and processes. However, scant research has been conducted on the relationship between ERP implementation and the timeliness of external audits, such as audit report lags. While some of the alleged benefits of ERP are closely related to removing impediments contributing to audit report lags, others argue that the complex mechanisms of ERP systems create greater complexity for control and audit. The test results indicate that overall a firm’s ERP implementation is negatively associated with audit report lag. However, this negative association is significant only at fourth and fifth years after initial ERP implementation. These results imply that the use of ERP systems by client firms may help decrease the audit report lag, but it takes time for the full impact of the firms’ accounting systems to be realized. The second essay examines the consequences resulting from the adoption of the fair value option (FVO) of SFAS 159 and explore the intentions of firms that adopt FVO. The primary objective of SFAS 159 is to mitigate the earnings volatility. However, there are also arguments implying that FVO could in fact increase earnings volatility. Thus, I first examine whether adopting FVO helps improve earnings volatility. Also, prior studies report the negative relationship between earnings volatility and the accuracy of earnings prediction. Therefore, the second hypothesis tests whether adopting FVO has an impact on the analysts’ forecast accuracy. The test results indicate that there is a positive association between FVO and earnings volatility and the relation can be amplified depending on the size of gains or losses resulting from the FVO. Also, the results indicate that the analysts’ forecast error of FVO adopter is greater than that of non-FVO adopters. I test two more hypotheses to explore the intention of firms’ decision to adopt FVO: opportunistic intention and informative intention. However, I do not find results which confirm my hypotheses except for limited evidence for the opportunistic intention.