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Full-Text Articles in Business
The Value Of Fiduciary Duties: Evidence From En Bloc Sales In Singapore, Jianfeng Hu, Kelvin F. K. Low, Wei Zhang
The Value Of Fiduciary Duties: Evidence From En Bloc Sales In Singapore, Jianfeng Hu, Kelvin F. K. Low, Wei Zhang
Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business
This paper examines the impact of fiduciary duties on collective asset sales in the case of owners acting as delegates for other owners, thereby potentially inducing conflicts of interests. Our identification strategy exploits a unique legal shock in Singapore, which established fiduciary duties in those transactions in the real estate market known colloquially as en bloc sales. The imposition of fiduciary duties caused the price premium of units sold via en bloc sales to increase over units ineligible for en bloc sale, as well as over units that, although eligible for en bloc sale, are sold individually. In addition, this …
Generalist Ceos And Audit Pricing, Zhiming Ma, Rencheng Wang, Kaitang Zhou
Generalist Ceos And Audit Pricing, Zhiming Ma, Rencheng Wang, Kaitang Zhou
Research Collection School Of Accountancy
We analyze the consequences of a firm hiring a generalist CEO in terms of the audit fees paid by the firm. We find that audit fees of clients with generalist CEOs are higher than those of clients with specialist CEOs. This relation is robust to considering managerial ability, other CEO characteristics, various fixed effects, instrumental variables, and change analyses. We further show that fee differences are larger for firms with weaker monitoring and higher corporate litigation risks. Through path analysis, we find that both client business risk and misreporting risk contribute to the fee difference. Finally, we find that auditors …
Marking To Market And Inefficient Investment Decisions, Clemens A. Otto, Paolo F. Volpin
Marking To Market And Inefficient Investment Decisions, Clemens A. Otto, Paolo F. Volpin
Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business
We examine how mark-to-market accounting affects the investment decisions of managers with reputation concerns. Reporting the current market value of a firm’s assets can help mitigate agency problems because it provides outsiders (e.g., shareholders) with new information against which the management’s decisions can be evaluated. However, the fact that the assets’ market value is informative can also have a negative side effect: managers may shy away from investments that indicate conflicting private information and would damage their reputation. This effect can lead to inefficient investment decisions and make marking to market less desirable when market prices are more informative.
Optimal Ceo Compensation With Search: Theory And Empirical Evidence, Melanie Cao, Rong Wang
Optimal Ceo Compensation With Search: Theory And Empirical Evidence, Melanie Cao, Rong Wang
Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business
We integrate an agency problem into search theory to study executive compensation in a market equilibrium. A CEO can choose to stay or quit and search after privately observing an idiosyncratic shock to the firm. The market equilibrium endogenizes CEOs’ and firms’ outside options and captures contracting externalities. We show that the optimal pay-to-performance ratio is less than one even when the CEO is risk neutral. Moreover, the equilibrium pay-to-performance sensitivity depends positively on a firm's idiosyncratic risk and negatively on the systematic risk. Our empirical tests using executive compensation data confirm these results.
The Agency Problem, Corporate Governance, And The Asymmetrical Behavior Of Selling, General, And Administrative Costs, Hai Lu, Hai Lu, Theodore Sougiannis
The Agency Problem, Corporate Governance, And The Asymmetrical Behavior Of Selling, General, And Administrative Costs, Hai Lu, Hai Lu, Theodore Sougiannis
Research Collection School Of Accountancy
Selling, general, and administrative (SG&A) costs represent a significant proportion of thecosts of business operations. On average, the SG&A costs to total assets ratio is 27 percent,compared to the research and development (R&D) to total assets ratio of 3 percent(Banker, Huang, and Natarajan 2011). Due to the importance of SG&A costs, practitionerspay close attention to controlling SG&A spending. Understanding SG&A cost behaviorand the role of managers in adjusting the costs is thus important to researchers andpractitioners. Recent empirical research indicates that SG&A costs behave asymmetrically,that is, they increase more rapidly when demand increases than they decline when demanddecreases (Anderson, Banker, …