Accounting Commons^™

A Theoretical Analysis Of Iso9000 Suppliers, Chiaho Chang

Department of Accounting and Finance Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This paper looks at the economic behavior of suppliers under different ISO9000 standards, especially that of ISO9001 and ISO9002. Considering the information asymmetry, given the same quality provided, the cost-reducing efforts of the ISO9001 SUPPLIER and ISO9002 SUPPLIER under a fixed, cost-plus contract are investigated. The result shows that the cost-reducing effort of the ISO9002 SUPPLIER is in line with the main manufacturer's expectations while the ISO9001 SUPPLIER is able to keep some of the information rent and exerts less effort. The bargaining power of the ISO9001 SUPPLIER is also stronger relative to that of the ISO9002 SUPPLIER. It is …

Characteristics Of Failed U.S. Commercial Banks: An Exploratory Study, Fatima Alali, Silvia Romero

Department of Accounting and Finance Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This study uses survival analysis to determine how early the indications of bank failure can be observed. We find that banks with high loan to asset and high personal loan to assets ratios are more likely to survive. Older banks and banks with high real estate and agricultural loans, loan loss allowance, loan charges off and non-performing loans to assets ratio are more likely to fail. It is possible to predict survival functions of <50% for failed banks, 3years or less before failure. Moreover, we find that most of the variables present a behaviour that departs from Benford's Law.

Management Forecast Credibility And Underreaction To News, Jeffrey Ng, Irem Tuna, Rodrigo Verdi

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

In this paper, we first document evidence of underreaction to management forecast news. We then hypothesize that the credibility of the forecast influences the magnitude of this underreaction. Relying on evidence that more credible forecasts are associated with a larger reaction in the short window around the management forecasts and a smaller post-management forecast drift in returns, we show that the magnitude of the underreaction is smaller for firms that provide more credible forecasts. Our paper contributes to the literature by providing out-of-sample evidence of the drift in returns documented in the post-earnings-announcement drift literature, with the credibility of the …

Financial Reporting Quality Of Chinese Reverse Merger Firms: The Reverse Merger Effect Or The China Effect?, Kun-Chih Chen, Qiang Cheng, Ying Chou Lin, Yu-Chen Lin, Xing Xiao

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

In this paper, we examine why Chinese reverse merger (RM) firms have lower financial reporting quality. We find that while U.S. RM firms have similar financial reporting quality as matched U.S. IPO firms, Chinese RM firms exhibit lower financial reporting quality than Chinese ADR firms. We further find that Chinese RM firms exhibit lower financial reporting quality than U.S. RM firms. These results indicate that the use of RM process is associated with poor financial reporting quality only in firms from China, where the legal enforcement is weaker than U.S. In addition, we find that compared to Chinese ADR firms, …

Family Ownership And Ceo Turnovers, Xia Chen, Qiang Cheng, Zhonglan Dai

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

This paper investigates the impact of the founding family’s presence on CEO turnover decisions. We find that family firms managed by CEOs outside the founding family (i.e., professional CEO family firms) have higher CEO turnover-performance sensitivity than family firms managed by family members (i.e., family CEO firms) or non-family firms. These results are robust to alternative performance measures and CEO turnover definitions. Additional analyses indicate that higher family ownership leads to even higher (lower) turnover-performance sensitivity in professional CEO family firms (family CEO firms). These results indicate that, with regard to CEO turnover decisions, better monitoring of CEOs by family …

A Survey Of Executive Compensation Contracts In China’S Listed Companies, Yubo Li, Fang Lou, Jiwei Wang, Hongqi Yuan

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We analyze 228 executive compensation contracts voluntarily disclosed by Chinese listed firms and find that central-government-controlled companies disclose more information in executive compensation contracts than local-government-controlled and non-government-controlled companies. Cash-based payments are the main form of executive compensation, whereas equity-based payments are seldom used by Chinese listed companies. On average, there are no significant differences in the value of basic salaries and performance-based compensation in executive compensation contracts. But, compared with their counterparts in non-government-controlled companies, executives in government-controlled companies are given more incentive compensation. Accounting earnings are typically used in executive compensation contracts, with few firms using stock returns …

Should Religious Organizations Worry About Irs Audits?, Sarah J. Webber, Janet S. Greenlee

Accounting Faculty Publications

A great deal of media attention has focused on recent perceived financial abuses of churches and religious organizations. Cases of fraud within religious organizations have fueled the public perception that churches require some form of monitoring to prevent financial abuse. However, the IRS has limited authority to audit religious organizations under section 7611, and the results of such audits are generally unavailable to the public.

Through a Freedom of Information Act request, we obtained the outcomes of all section 7611 IRS audits of religious organizations conducted between 2001 and 2010. We found that although the number of both churches and …

Managerial Incentives And Management Forecast Precision, Qiang Cheng, Ting Luo, Heng Yue

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Managers have great discretion in determining forecast characteristics, but little is known about how managerial incentives affect these characteristics. This paper examines whether managers strategically choose forecast precision for self-serving purposes. Building on the prior finding that the market reaction to vague forecasts is weaker than its reaction to precise forecasts, we find that for management forecasts disclosed before insider sales, more positive (negative) news forecasts are more (less) precise than other management forecasts. The opposite applies to management forecasts disclosed before insider purchases. These results are consistent with managers strategically choosing forecast precision to increase stock prices before insider …

Internal Governance And Real Earnings Management, Qiang Cheng, Jimmy Lee, Terry J. Shevlin

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We examine whether internal governance affects the extent of real earnings management. Internal governance refers to the process through which key subordinate executives provide checks and balances in the organization and affect corporate decisions. Using the number of years to retirement to capture key subordinate executives’ incentives and using their compensation relative to CEO compensation to capture their influence within the firm, we find that the extent of real earnings management decreases with key subordinate executives’ horizon and influence. In cross-sectional analyses, we find that the impact of internal governance is more important for firms with more complex operations where …

The Effect Of Corporate Tax Avoidance On The Cost Of Equity, Beng Wee Goh, Jimmy Lee, Chee Yeow Lim, Terry Shevlin

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

While prior studies have examined how investors perceive extreme forms of tax avoidance behavior such as tax sheltering and uncertain tax position (e.g., Hanlon and Slemrod 2009; Wilson 2009; Koester 2011; Hutchens and Rego 2012), there is little evidence on how investors perceive less extreme forms of tax avoidance. This study fills this void by examining the relation between firm’s cost of equity and corporate tax avoidance using three measures that capture less extreme forms of corporate tax avoidance: book-tax differences, permanent book-tax differences, and long-run cash effective tax rates. We find that less aggressive forms of corporate tax avoidance …

Getting Your Accounting Right, Themin Suwardy, Jiwei Wang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

The book brings together authors from the industry and the academic world to contribute articles on the topic of high quality financial reporting. The objective is to help business directors and accounts preparers to understand the importance of high quality financial reporting to their business and get it right from the start.

Do Firms Hedge Optimally? Evidence From An Exogenous Governance Change, Sterling Zhenrui Huang, Urs Peyer, Benjamin Segal

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We ask whether firms hedge optimally by analyzing the impact the NYSE/NASDAQ listing rule changes have had, which exogenously imposed board composition changes on a subset of firms, on financial risk management. Using new proxies for the extent of financial risk management in non-financial firms we find that treated firms reduce their financial hedging, in a difference-in-difference framework. The reduction is concentrated in firms with higher conflicts of interests, such as a high CEO equity ownership level, which exposes them to more idiosyncratic risk, and a higher occurrence of option backdating. We reject the hypothesis that newly majority-independent boards reduce …

Non-Audit Fees, Institutional Monitoring, And Audit Quality, Chee Yeow Lim, David K. Ding, Charlie Charoenwong

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We posit that the effect of non-audit fees on audit quality is conditional on the extent of institutional monitoring. We suggest that institutional investors have incentives and the ability to monitor financial reporting quality. Because of the reputation concerns and potential litigation exposure, auditors are likely to provide high audit quality, when they also provide non-audit services to clients, particularly when clients are subject to high institutional monitoring. We find evidence that, as non-audit fees increase, audit quality (measured by performance-adjusted discretionary current accruals and earnings-response coefficients) reduces only for clients with low institutional ownership but not for clients with …

Work Out Optimum Tax Rates, Benefits For A New Business, Teng Aun Khoo, Clement Tan Kai Guan

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

No abstract provided.

Are Investors' Corporate Site Visits Informative?, Qiang Cheng, Fei Du, Xin Wang, Yutao Wang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Corporate site visit is an important type of investors’ information acquisition activities, but its usefulness is not well understood in the literature, partially due to the lack of data. Using a unique dataset of corporate site visits in China, we analyze the information content and the determinants of corporate site visits. Our main findings are as follows. First, we document a significant market reaction to corporate site visits and the market reaction is stronger for group visits, for visits conducted by mutual fund managers, for visits covering firm-specific topics, and for firms with poorer information environment. Second, we find that …

Are Investors' Corporate Site Visits Informative?, Qiang Cheng, Fei Du, Xin Wang, Yutao Wang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Corporate site visit is an important type of investors’ information acquisition activities, but its usefulness is not well understood in the literature, partially due to the lack of data. Using a unique dataset of corporate site visits in China, we analyze the information content and the determinants of corporate site visits. Our main findings are as follows. First, we document a significant market reaction to corporate site visits and the market reaction is stronger for group visits, for visits conducted by mutual fund managers, for visits covering firm-specific topics, and for firms with poorer information environment. Second, we find that …

Accounting Restatements And External Financing Choices, Xia Chen, Qiang Cheng, Alvis Lo

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

There is little research on how accounting information quality affects a firm’s external financing choices. In this paper, we use the occurrence of accounting restatements as a proxy for the reduced credibility of accounting information and investigate how restatements affect a firm’s external financing choices. We find that for firms that obtain external financing after restatements, they rely more on debt financing, especially private debt financing, and less on equity financing. The increase in debt financing is more pronounced for firms with more severe information problems and less pronounced for firms with prompt CEO/CFO turnover and auditor dismissal. Our evidence …

When The Pcaob Talks, Who Listens? Evidence From Stakeholder Reaction To Gaap-Deficient Pcaob Inspection Reports Of Small Auditors, Lawrence J. Abbott, Katherine A. Gunny, Tracey Chunqi Zhang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Section 104 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) created the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB). The PCAOB conducts inspections of registered public accounting firms that provide audits for publicly traded companies. The results of the inspection process are summarized in publicly available reports at the PCAOB website. Using these reports, we categorize the inspection reports into three levels of increasing severity: clean, GAAS-deficient, and GAAP-deficient. We examine the potential use of GAAP-deficient PCAOB inspection reports as perceived audit quality signals for the clients of GAAP-deficient auditors that are inspected on a triennial basis by the PCAOB. Our investigation is predicated …

Standard Costing Variances: Potential Red Flags Of Fraud?, Cecily A. Raiborn, Janet B. Butler, Lucian Zelazny

Accounting Faculty Publications

This article focuses on how standard cost variances can be used in detecting potential fraudulent activities. Each primary type of variance (material, labor, and overhead) is addressed with a discussion of possible inappropriate causal factors. Additionally, internal controls, graphic techniques, and other methods that can be implemented to combat fraud are provided.

The Liability Of Foreignness In International Equity Investments: Evidence From The U.S. Stock Market, Bok Baik, Jun-Koo Kang, Jin-Mo Kim, Joonho Lee

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Using foreign institutional ownership data in the US from 1990 to 2007, we examine whether foreign institutional investors face liabilities of foreignness (LOF) in the US stock market. We find that foreign institutional investors prefer low information asymmetry stocks more than domestic institutional investors do, and this preference for low information asymmetry stocks is particularly strong among foreign institutional investors from countries with high LOF. More importantly, we find that a change in foreign institutional ownership is negatively related to future returns, whereas this relation does not exist for domestic institutional ownership. The negative relation between the change in foreign …

Pcaob Inspection Reports And Audit Quality, Katherine A. Gunny, Tracey Chunqi Zhang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

With the creation of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), audit firm oversight shifted away from self-regulation to independent regulation. The inspections program is the central feature of the PCAOB. We examine whether PCAOB inspections are able to distinguish actual audit quality (as opposed to perceived) during the period inspected to better understand this important regulatory tool. We use three measures that proxy for actual audit quality: abnormal accruals, restatements, and the propensity to issue a going concern opinion. For triennially inspected auditors, we find that PCAOB inspections are associated with lower audit quality when the reports are seriously …

Why The Sec Is Delaying Adoption Of International Financial Reporting Standards, Clemense Ehoff Jr., Dov Fischer

All Faculty Scholarship for the College of Business

In 2002, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) formally began a process to converge Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). The SEC has repeatedly delayed its decision on whether to adopt International Financial Reporting Standards as the financial reporting system for U.S. public companies, continue with the convergence project, or reject IFRS altogether. This paper will examine several key reports issued by the SEC and the Financial Accounting Foundation to gain further insight into 1) why the SEC has repeatedly delayed its decision, and 2) what the SEC …

The Importance Of Information Integrity: In A Data-Driven World, Unreliable And Inaccurate Information Can Lead To Bad Decision-Making, Sridhar Ramamoorti, Madhavan K. Nayar

Accounting Faculty Publications

What is information integrity? It is the trustworthiness and dependability of information. The credibility of information depends on whether we are getting it from sources we can trust. After all, the value of information to the decision-maker and problem-solver consists first in its integrity, and then in its usefulness and usability. Why? Because, even the best chef knows that you can't make a good omelet out of bad eggs! Consider the emerging trend of big data (see" Big Data" on page 34). According to IBM, people create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every day (a quintillion is 1 followed by …

Benford's Law: Analyzing A Decade Of Financial Data, Fatima A. Alali, Silvia Romero

Department of Accounting and Finance Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This study uses a decade of financial accounting data to examine if and how they depart from Benford's Law. Using a large sample of U.S. public companies, we conduct an analysis of the first-two digits of data items generally used in research to measure total accruals and discretionary accruals and where fraud, restatements, and enforcement actions are revealed. We break down a decade of data into six subperiods; pre-SOX Period (2001), SOX 1 Period (2002-2003), SOX 2 Period (2004-2006), SOX 3 Period (2007), Crisis 1 Period (2008), and Crisis 2 Period (2009-2010). We find different indicators of manipulation during the …

The Impact Of Sfas133 On Income Smoothing By Banks Through Loan Loss Provisions, Emre Kilic, Gerald J. Lobo, Tharindra Ranasinghe, K. Sivaramakrishnan

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We examine the impact of SFAS 133, Accounting for Derivative Instruments and Hedging Activities, on the reporting behavior of commercial banks and the informativeness of their financial statements. We argue that because the stricter recognition and classification requirements of SFAS 133 reduced banks' ability to smooth income through derivatives, banks more affected by SFAS 133 will rely more on loan loss provisions to smooth income. We find evidence consistent with this argument. We also find that the increased reliance on loan loss provisions for smoothing income has impaired the informativeness of loan loss provisions.

Managerial Incentives And Management Forecast Precision, Qiang Cheng, Ting Luo, Heng Yue

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Managers have great discretion in determining management forecast characteristics, but little is known about how managerial incentives affect these characteristics. In this paper, we examine whether managers strategically choose the precision of their earnings forecasts for self-serving purposes. Building on prior research demonstrating that the market reaction to vague management forecasts is weaker than its reaction to precise forecasts, we find that for management forecasts disclosed before insider sales, more positive (negative) news forecasts are more (less) precise than other management forecasts. The opposite applies to management forecasts disclosed before insider purchases. These results are consistent with managers strategically choosing …

The Opportunistic Reporting Of Material Events And The Apparent Misconception Of Investors' Reaction, Dan Segal, Benjamin Segal

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Using a comprehensive sample of non-earnings 8-K filings from 1996 to 2011, we examine whether firms engage in opportunistic reporting of mandatory and voluntary news. We find strong evidence of opportunistic reporting of negative news, especially among public firms. Public firms are more likely to delay disclosure of negative news, report negative news after trading hours, and report on the last day of the week. We also find evidence of opportunistic bundling of news. Our findings support the notion that managers engage in strategic disclosure by delaying or obfuscating negative news in order to mitigate the potential market reaction. Factors …

A Transactional Genealogy Of Scandal: From Michael Milken To Enron To Goldman Sachs, William W. Bratton, Adam J. Levitin

All Faculty Scholarship

Three scandals have reshaped business regulation over the past thirty years: the securities fraud prosecution of Michael Milken in 1988, the Enron implosion of 2001, and the Goldman Sachs “ABACUS” enforcement action of 2010. The scandals have always been seen as unrelated. This Article highlights a previously unnoticed transactional affinity tying these scandals together—a deal structure known as the synthetic collateralized debt obligation involving the use of a special purpose entity (“SPE”). The SPE is a new and widely used form of corporate alter ego designed to undertake transactions for its creator’s accounting and regulatory benefit.

The SPE remains mysterious …