The Sarbanes-Oxley Act and Small Public Companies

This study constructs measures of costs as well as benefits of implementing Section 404 for small public companies. This paper provides a comprehensive measure of Section 404 costs by developing models of direct and indirect costs based on financial statement information. The results thus far indicate that implementing Section 404 of SOX was very costly for smaller public companies and therefore the non-accelerated filers that will become Section 404 compliant in the next few years need to be ready to pay a much higher cost for being public in the US.