ABSTRACT Our study proposes the usage of aggregate earnings to forecast future GDP growth. Using empirical analyses with global quarterly data, we investigate whether aggregate-level profitability drivers, which are components of aggregate earnings, are relevant for forecasting GDP growth. After confirming that aggregate-level profitability drivers are useful for forecasting future GDP growth worldwide

ABSTRACT This study examines whether fair value accounting and its complexity influence financial statement comparability. Using quarterly US bank holding company data from 2008 to 2014, I find that the proportion of assets and liabilities that are fair valued is negatively associated with financial statement comparability and that this negative relation appears to be driven by the less v erifiable

ABSTRACT We examine whether cross-firm comparability of earnings and operating cash flows influence the usefulness of earnings and cash flows in CEO compensation. We find that earnings (cash flow) comparability is positively associated with the compensation weight of earnings (cash flow) and negatively associated with the weight of cash flow (earnings), suggesting a substitution effect between earnings

ABSTRACT In this study we examine whether and how extravert key executives in firms affect the provision of management earnings forecasts and the associated stock market reactions. We provide evidence that firms with extraverted chief financial officers (CFOs) tend to issue more earnings forecasts, earnings forecasts with a higher level of disaggregation, and earnings forecasts accompanied by supplementary

ABSTRACT Using cross-border M&A activities and national cultural scores from the Hofstede Insights organization, we study the impact of national cultural distance on cross-border M&As from 2008 to 2017. The empirical evidence shows that both the success of M&A attempts and the post-acquisition stock returns are negatively related to national cultural distance. We also test this negative relation considering

ABSTRACT This study examines the extent to which corporate governance (CG) affects disclosure tone (DT) and assesses the impact of DT on firm value (FV). It also tests the effect of CG on FV using DT as an intermediary variable. Content analysis is used to measure DT level. CEO duality, board size, gender diversity, and board independence are used as proxies for CG. Tobin’s Q is used to measure FV

ABSTRACT Decision-making behavior can be capricious and may vary from individual to individual. This paper provides a straightforward method for the empirical identification of the narrative style affecting financial decisions under time pressure. Punctuation, Chinese characters and sentence length constitute different narrative styles. Using data from Renrendai, we find that as the number and type

ABSTRACT This study examines the effect of initial credit ratings on voluntary disclosure in Korea. Managers are concerned about initial credit ratings because they become the benchmark for future debt issues. Therefore, firms may have incentives to opportunistic disclosure in order to get favorable credit ratings during the initial credit rating evaluation. We find that the frequency of voluntary

ABSTRACT Drawing on propositions from Hillman and Dalziel’s pioneering 2003 articulation of Board Capital Theory, this paper investigates the interaction between NED externally-derived capital (proxied by multi-factor capital breadth and focal industry capital depth), internally-derived capital (proxied by tenure overlap), and their equity ownership in the focal firm in influencing firm accounting

ABSTRACT This paper examines whether insider trade clustering is associated with large stock return variations (i.e. crash or jump risk) in Korea. To investigate private information of insider trade clustering, we separate insider trade clustering into sale clusters and purchase clusters and then document whether trading behavior of insider sale (purchase) clusters is related to the likelihood of a

ABSTRACT This research examines three strategies that a multi-product firm can adopt when facing a single-product entrant under Bertrand competition: (i) staying in the duopoly market, (ii) abandoning the duopoly market, and (iii) bundling the two goods. When the competing good is homogenous, bundling is the most profitable strategy if the product differentiation of the two goods produced by the multi-product

ABSTRACT Although researchers have paid increasing attention to how corporate governance influences firm performance, there has been limited focus on how the internal audit function impacts firm performance. This study thus examines how the implementation of internal audit recommendations (IIAR) impacts firm performance and whether audit committee characteristics increase or decrease this impact. By

ABSTRACT Chief executive officers (CEOs) could use tax avoidance to reduce costs and hence increase firm profits. Nevertheless, the reputation of the firm could be harmed. Prior studies find that firms’ tax avoidance is associated with CEOs’ personality traits. We attempt to predict firms’ engagement in tax avoidance using CEOs’ flying hobby measured by the pilot certificate. Using various advanced

ABSTRACT This study examines how the board of directors (BOD) of Islamic banks (IBs) might affect earnings management differently, compared to BOD of conventional banks (CBs). Our results indicate that banks in the MENA region that promote BOD independence incur less earnings management. Distinguishing between CBs and IBs, we document higher loan quality and credit policy at IBs. Moreover, smaller

ABSTRACT This study analyzes the effect of bank CEO appointment structure and tenure on borrowers’ accounting practices and earnings management. Drawing on agency theory, we posit that agency costs are high for banks that frequently change CEOs and those that appoint CEOs from external sources. The results indicate firms that borrow from banks with high agency costs adopt less conservative accounting

ABSTRACT With a difference-in-differences approach, we find that world-wide reforms result in higher audit fees for reform firms. And this is specially so for reforms involving components of director independence and/or audit committee and auditor independence, adopting the rule-based approach, and implemented in countries with weaker institutional quality. Further analysis reveals that the increase

ABSTRACT This study investigates the impact of the inevitable disclosure doctrine (IDD) on risk-taking incentives of chief executive officers (CEOs). Because the IDD restricts CEOs’ external employment opportunities, we expect CEOs to become more risk-averse and firms to increase CEO risk-taking incentives after IDD adoption. Consistent with expectations, we find that IDD adoption is associated with

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the effectiveness of monetary policy instruments under dollarization in association with economic growth and inflation using 30 countries from 2000 to 2016. The estimation results indicate that first, the monetary aggregates, M2, are more relevant policy instruments while the interest rates including policy rates exhibit overall limited effectiveness under dollarization

ABSTRACT This paper examines whether distracted shareholders reduce firms’ value of cash holdings. Following prior literature, we construct a firm-year level shareholder ‘distraction’ measure, by exploiting exogenous shocks to institutional shareholders’ portfolios. We find that firms with distracted shareholders experience a decrease in the marginal value of cash holdings, which indicates that firms

ABSTRACT In this study, we examine the impact of labor union power on stock price synchronicity. We proxy labor union power by the collective relation law index and measure stock price synchronicity by the level of co-movement between a firm’s stock price and market index. Using a sample of 37 countries between 1995 and 2016, we find that labor union power is positively associated with stock price

ABSTRACT Using a novel debt enforcement index reflecting legal and economic characteristics directly relating to resolving insolvency across the world, we document that bank loan terms are more stringent (larger interest rate spread, higher collateral requirement, more covenants) in countries with weaker debt enforcement. The effect is more prominent when creditor rights are better protected and debtors

ABSTRACT Several studies provide evidence that auditors play an important role in the implementation of accounting comparability. We extend this line of research by examining whether comparability in accounting earnings between two firms is affected by auditor industry expertise measured at the partner level. Using 45,741 pairs of firms over the period 2003–2016, we find that the accounting comparability

ABSTRACT This study examines whether auditor switching for opinion shopping (OS) influences investors’ perceptions of audit quality (proxied by earnings response coefficients; ERCs). To the extent that audit quality deteriorates after firms switch auditors for OS, investors are less likely to rely on these firms’ audited earnings. This may result in a negative association between auditor switching

ABSTRACT Opportunistic overspending tendencies induce inflexible cost adjustments and encourage bad cost stickiness. To examine whether this perspective applies to public sector organizations (PSOs) and mergers, we test the asymmetric cost behaviors, (1) free riding and (2) empire building, associated with managerial incentives in merged Japanese municipal enterprises. Consequently, we find evidence

ABSTRACT In this study, we examine whether the stock market pricing of the funding status of pension plans has improved after the adoption of SFAS 158. We find that the overvaluation of firms with severely underfunded pension plans, as documented in the prior literature, is no longer observed in the years after the adoption of SFAS 158. In addition, we find that the positive effect of SFAS 158 adoption

This study finds differential performance impacts of outsider and insider interim CEO successions. Stock markets react incrementally positively to interim CEO successions when the interim CEOs are ...

Recent anecdotes suggest that shareholdings of for-profit firms by nonprofit organizations engender agency conflicts between donors and managers. Analyzing a unique dataset of nonprofits in Korea, ...

In this paper, we examine whether requirements to disclose audited financial statements enhance financial reporting quality of privately held firms. Unlike U.S. private firms, private corporations ...

Corporate credit ratings (CRs) are closely related to companies’ cost of debt financing. Recent research has drawn wide attention to how nonfinancial as well as financial factors may affect ratings...

The purpose of our study is to explore the relationship among managerial overconfidence, CSR and firm value. Nonlinear regression and OLS regression are used to test the hypotheses. Managerial over...

We critically examine two important methodological issues related to the estimation of discretionary accruals: the Jones models and the industry approach, both of which are considered the norms in ...