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Research Collection School Of Accountancy

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Full-Text Articles in Business

China's Anti‐Corruption Campaign And Financial Reporting Quality, Ole-Kristian Hope, Heng Yue, Qinlin Zhong Jun 2020

China's Anti‐Corruption Campaign And Financial Reporting Quality, Ole-Kristian Hope, Heng Yue, Qinlin Zhong

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We examine the impact of China’s anti-corruption campaign on firm-level financial reporting quality (FRQ). As an important component of the anti-corruption campaign, in October 2013, “Rule 18” was issued to prohibit party and government officials from serving as directors for publicly listed firms. The regulation led to a large number of official directors resigning from their roles as directors involuntarily. As such, Rule 18 has effectively weakened, if not fullydiscontinued, the political connections of the firms that previously hired officials as directors. Our empirical analyses employ a difference-in-differences research design with firm fixed effects and PSM to examine the pre- …


Short Sellers And Long‐Run Management Forecasts, Xia Chen, Qiang Cheng, Ting Luo, Heng Yue Jun 2020

Short Sellers And Long‐Run Management Forecasts, Xia Chen, Qiang Cheng, Ting Luo, Heng Yue

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We examine how short sellers affect long‐run management forecasts using a natural experiment (Regulation SHO) that relaxes short‐selling constraints on a group of randomly selected firms (referred to as pilot firms). We find that compared to other firms, the pilot firms issue more long‐run good news forecasts but do not change the frequency of long‐run bad news forecasts. The increase in good news forecasts is greater when the pilot firms have higher quality forecasts, greater uncertainty about firm value, or higher manager equity incentives. Overall, these results and the results of additional analyses indicate that the reduction in short‐selling constraints …


Leveraging Digital Technology To Transform Accounting Function: Case Study Of A Sme, Gary Pan, Benjamin Lee Jun 2020

Leveraging Digital Technology To Transform Accounting Function: Case Study Of A Sme, Gary Pan, Benjamin Lee

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Digital transformation is taking hold of the processes and systems in accounting at a rapid pace and in a drastic way. With its emphasis on data and analysis, accounting entity is well suited to reap the benefits digital technologies have to offer. With the rapid infusion of digital technologies in accounting entity, the accounting literature has been calling for more empirical studies to examine the way accounting function leverages digital technology to enhance its analytical capabilities so as to obtain deeper business insights. This paper conducts an empirical study to examine the process of a SME's accounting function leveraging data …


Gender And Beauty In The Financial Analyst Profession: Evidence From The United States And China, Congcong Li, An-Ping Lin, Hai Lu, Kevin Veenstra Jun 2020

Gender And Beauty In The Financial Analyst Profession: Evidence From The United States And China, Congcong Li, An-Ping Lin, Hai Lu, Kevin Veenstra

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We examine how gender and beauty affect the likelihood of being voted as an All-Star in the financial analyst profession in both the United States and China. We find that female analysts are more likely to be voted as All-Star analysts in the United States, but good-looking female U.S. analysts are less likely to be voted as All-Stars. The conclusion is the opposite for Chinese analysts. We find that female analysts in China are less likely to be voted as All-Stars, but the likelihood increases with their facial attractiveness. These findings implicate a beauty penalty for female analysts in the …


Cfos Play Crucial Role In Surviving Covid-19 Crisis, Themin Suwardy Jun 2020

Cfos Play Crucial Role In Surviving Covid-19 Crisis, Themin Suwardy

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

In recent years, chief financial officers (CFOs) have been called upon to do many things. They have stepped beyond their traditional technical finance functions, embracing technology and innovations to partner chief executive officers (CEOs) and boards on strategic issues. But if asked at the end of 2019, probably no CFO would place "managing through a global pandemic and economic crisis at the same time" among their top five things to do in 2020. Like many others, CFOs are being asked to do even more in a very short timeframe.


Does Litigation Deter Or Encourage Real Earnings Management, Sterling Huang, Sugata Roychowdhury, Ewa Sletten May 2020

Does Litigation Deter Or Encourage Real Earnings Management, Sterling Huang, Sugata Roychowdhury, Ewa Sletten

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

In this paper, we rely on an exogenous shock to examine the impact of litigation risk on real earnings management (REM). We conduct differences-in-differences tests centered on an unanticipated court ruling that reduced litigation risk for firms headquartered in the Ninth Circuit. REM increases significantly following the ruling for Ninth-Circuit firms relative to other firms, consistent with litigation risk deterring REM. Additional analyses reveal that REM rises more following the ruling when firms issue more optimistic disclosures. The evidence is consistent with litigation deterring REM by constraining managers' ability to issue optimistic and misleading disclosures that can conceal the myopic …


Developing Online Business Strategy With Millennials Through Partnership With University, Yuanto Kusnadi, Gary Pan May 2020

Developing Online Business Strategy With Millennials Through Partnership With University, Yuanto Kusnadi, Gary Pan

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about a significant shift in shopping behaviour from offline to online among Singaporean consumers. According to data from data analytics firm Nielsen, 37 per cent of Singaporean consumers have increased online shopping activities since the COVID-19 outbreak. This shift towards online shopping, food delivery and e-groceries may persist beyond the COVID-19 period. While the increase in online shopping has benefited online stores, many businesses who do not yet have an online presence or have not been paying much attention to conducting sales online were caught off-guard during the circuit breaker period which has resulted in …


Digitalisation Of Smes In Singapore: An Institute Of Higher Learning-Enterprise Partnership Model, Benjamin Huan Zhou Lee, Gary Pan May 2020

Digitalisation Of Smes In Singapore: An Institute Of Higher Learning-Enterprise Partnership Model, Benjamin Huan Zhou Lee, Gary Pan

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

An SME had commissioned a team of five accounting students to develop a forecasting model using analytics. The student team was from the Accounting Analytics Capstone (SMU-X) course offered by the School of Accountancy, Singapore Management University (SMU), in January 2018. For this project, the student-consultants applied their knowledge of accounting data and analytics, combining it with a multidisciplinary approach to solve real-world complex financial analytical problems that have real-time consequences.


Text Analytics, Nlp, And Accounting Research, Richard M. Crowley Apr 2020

Text Analytics, Nlp, And Accounting Research, Richard M. Crowley

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

The presentation covered: What is text analytics and NLP?; How text analytics has evolved in the accounting literature since the 1980s; What current (as of 2020) methods are used in the literature; What methods are on the horizon.


Audit Profession Must Rid ‘Overworked, Underpaid’ Image To Attract Best Talent, Chi Kwan Yuen, Gary Pan, Clarence Goh Apr 2020

Audit Profession Must Rid ‘Overworked, Underpaid’ Image To Attract Best Talent, Chi Kwan Yuen, Gary Pan, Clarence Goh

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Many accounting graduates are deterred from joining the audit profession because of the perception that auditors are lowly-paid and made to work long hours.


Dynamic Auditor Competition And Audit Quality In The United States, Arum Choi, Jeong-Bon Kim, Yoonseok Zang Apr 2020

Dynamic Auditor Competition And Audit Quality In The United States, Arum Choi, Jeong-Bon Kim, Yoonseok Zang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Regulators and audit market participants have concerned that less competitive audit market makes auditors to reduce the incentives to conduct high-quality audits. While a few studies examine the effect of competition in the U.S. local audit markets, they report conflicting evidence using the static Herfindahl index which is arguably noisy in capturing the intensity of competition. The purpose of this paper is to provide evidence on the effect of dynamic auditor competition in local audit markets on audit quality. For this purpose, we employ a measure to capture the dynamic nature of audit market competition: the proportion of clients switching …


What Are You Saying? Using Topic To Detect Financial Misreporting, Nerissa C. Brown, Richard M. Crowley, W. Brooke Elliott Mar 2020

What Are You Saying? Using Topic To Detect Financial Misreporting, Nerissa C. Brown, Richard M. Crowley, W. Brooke Elliott

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We use a machine learning technique to assess whether the thematic content of financial statement disclosures (labeled topic) is incrementally informative in predicting intentional misreporting. Using a Bayesian topic modeling algorithm, we determine and empirically quantify the topic content of a large collection of 10‐K narratives spanning 1994 to 2012. We find that the algorithm produces a valid set of semantically meaningful topics that predict financial misreporting, based on samples of Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) enforcement actions (Accounting and Auditing Enforcement Releases [AAERs]) and irregularities identified from financial restatements and 10‐K filing amendments. Our out‐of‐sample tests indicate that topic …


Family Entrenchment And Internal Control: Evidence From S&P 1500 Firms, Xia Chen, Mei Feng, Chan Li Mar 2020

Family Entrenchment And Internal Control: Evidence From S&P 1500 Firms, Xia Chen, Mei Feng, Chan Li

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We examine whether family owners exploit internal control weaknesses for entrenchment purposes and whether the public disclosure requirement under SOX 404 helps alleviate this entrenchment. We find supportive evidence for both questions. In the initial years of SOX 404 implementation (2004 and 2005), ineffective internal control in family CEO firms is more conducive to entrenchment - measured by the occurrence of misstatements, frauds, and related party transactions - than ineffective internal control in nonfamily firms is. With the public disclosure requirement of SOX 404 in place, family CEO firms are more likely to remediate internal control weaknesses, and the resulting …


Happy Analysts, Ole-Kristian Hope, Congcong Li, An-Ping Lin, Maryjane Rabier Feb 2020

Happy Analysts, Ole-Kristian Hope, Congcong Li, An-Ping Lin, Maryjane Rabier

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

This paper is the first to investigate the role of work-life balance in financial analysts’ performance and career advancement. Using a large sample of Glassdoor reviews by financial analysts, we find a significant non-linear relation between work-life balance satisfaction and analyst performance and analyst career advancement. Specifically, when work-life balance satisfaction is relatively low, an increase in work-life balance is associated with better analyst performance and career advancement; however, when perceived work-life balance is already high, a further increase in work-life balance is associated with worse analyst performance and career advancement.


An Illustrative Explanation Of Changes In Ownership Interests, Pearl Hock-Neo Tan Feb 2020

An Illustrative Explanation Of Changes In Ownership Interests, Pearl Hock-Neo Tan

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

The ISCA Breakfast Talk on January 15 brought together 94 members to hear from Dr Pearl Tan, Associate Professor (Education), Singapore Management University. Dr Tan explained and illustrated the principles behind the accounting for changes in ownership interests with and without change in control, in Financial Reporting Standard (FRS) 103 Business Combinations and FRS 110 Consolidated Financial Statements. Although the standards are not new, she emphasised that clarity in their principles is essential in group reporting.


Consequences Of Disclosing Clinical Trial Results: Evidence From The Food And Drug Administration Amendments Act, Thomas Borveau, Vedran Capkun, Yin Wang Feb 2020

Consequences Of Disclosing Clinical Trial Results: Evidence From The Food And Drug Administration Amendments Act, Thomas Borveau, Vedran Capkun, Yin Wang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We examine how the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act (FDAAA) of 2007, which requires additional disclosures regarding clinical trial results, impacts information asymmetry between the disclosing pharmaceutical firm and capital market participants, the general public, academics, and practitioners. We document a reduction in information asymmetry in capital markets. We also document an increase in adverse event and product problem complaint reports filed against the pharmaceutical firms to the FDA and a higher number of drug and medical device recalls for affected firms after the FDAAA enactment. Finally, cross-sectional analyses suggest that the increase in FDA complaint reports and …


(When) Does Transparency Hurt Liquidity?, Karthik Balakrishnan, Aytekin Ertan, Yun Je Lee Feb 2020

(When) Does Transparency Hurt Liquidity?, Karthik Balakrishnan, Aytekin Ertan, Yun Je Lee

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Conventional wisdom suggests that increases in public information improve market liquidity. However, if greater public information incentivizes only sophisticated investors to produce private information, it could exacerbate information asymmetry among investors and thus reduce liquidity. We explore this argument on a sample of mortgage-backed securities (MBSs) by using a recent European regulation that mandates complex disclosures about the individual loans underlying MBSs. We find that the liquidity of the debt tranches of disclosed MBSs declines by 23% post-regulation. Our inferences are stronger when the securities are harder to value and when the disparity in investor sophistication is higher. In contrast …


Using Online Tutorials To Teach The Accounting Cycle, Tracey Chunqi Zhang, Lay Chin Low, Poh Sun Seow Jan 2020

Using Online Tutorials To Teach The Accounting Cycle, Tracey Chunqi Zhang, Lay Chin Low, Poh Sun Seow

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

The accounting cycle is an important yet difficult topic for introductory financial accounting students to learn. These students often lack the business context to understand the accounting cycle and find the traditional teaching approach dry. This problem motivates the authors to examine whether a blended learning approach via online tutorials can improve students’ perceived knowledge of the accounting cycle for the undergraduate introductory financial accounting course. The authors developed four innovative online tutorials with a coherent storyline to enable students to learn the accounting cycle and to supplement in-class learning. To test the effectiveness of online tutorials, an independent survey …


Cross-Industry Information Sharing And Analyst Performance, Allen Huang, An-Ping Lin, Amy Zang Jan 2020

Cross-Industry Information Sharing And Analyst Performance, Allen Huang, An-Ping Lin, Amy Zang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

This study shows that analyst research benefits from the sharing of information about economically connected industries among colleagues. Measuring the intensity of potential information sharing with the level of economic connection between an analyst’s industry and her colleagues’ industries, we find that it is positively correlated with an analyst’s earnings forecast accuracy, stock recommendation profitability, coverage breadth, and report frequency after controlling for other determinants including broker or analyst fixed effects. We also find that analysts are more likely to issue reports when highly connected colleagues produce information. We show that sharing information with colleagues covering downstream (upstream) industries benefits …


Information Externalities And Voluntary Disclosure: Evidence From A Major Customer’S Earnings Announcement, Young Jun Cho, Yongtae Kim, Yoonseok Zang Jan 2020

Information Externalities And Voluntary Disclosure: Evidence From A Major Customer’S Earnings Announcement, Young Jun Cho, Yongtae Kim, Yoonseok Zang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We examine the relation between information externalities along the supply chain and voluntary disclosure. Information transfers from a major customer's earnings announcement (EA) can substitute for its supplier's disclosure. Conversely, if the customer's EA increases uncertainties regarding the supplier's future prospects, it can increase the demand for disclosure. After controlling for information incorporated in supplier returns, we find that the supplier is more likely to issue earnings guidance after the customer's EA when the EA news deviates more from the market's expectation. The positive effect of the customer's news on earnings guidance is weaker when common investors, supply-chain analysts, or …


The Relevance Of Non-Financial Key Performance Indicators, Bingxu Fang, Partha Mohanram, Dushyant Vyas Jan 2020

The Relevance Of Non-Financial Key Performance Indicators, Bingxu Fang, Partha Mohanram, Dushyant Vyas

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

The limitations of financials statements in assessing firm performance have long been known to the academic and practitioner accounting communities. Recent years have witnessed a sharp increase in the frequency and scope of non-financial Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) disclosed by companies and used by market participants. In this study, we investigate the relevance of various voluntarily reported non-financial KPIs. We find that KPIs are positively associated with future profitability, sales growth, and current stock returns; however, the stock market underreacts to the information embedded in KPIs for firms operating in opaque information environments.


Chief Financial Officer Demographic Characteristics And Fraudulent Financial Reporting In China, Jinghui Sun, Pamela Kent, Baolei Qi, Jiwei Wang Dec 2019

Chief Financial Officer Demographic Characteristics And Fraudulent Financial Reporting In China, Jinghui Sun, Pamela Kent, Baolei Qi, Jiwei Wang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We investigate whether management's cognitions, values and perceptions are associated with fraud for 18 863 firm-years for Chinese listed firms from 2000 to 2014. Demographic characteristics of the chief financial officer (CFO) are used as proxies for management's cognitions, values and perceptions. We find that fraudulent financial reporting is higher when CFOs are younger, male, and have lower education backgrounds. An analysis of inflated earnings, fictitious assets, material omissions and other material misstatements provide similar results, with the exception that CFOs with higher education levels are associated with more inflated earnings. Accounting and Finance


Regulations And Brain Drain: Evidence From Wall Street Star Analysts’ Career Choices, Yuyan Guan, Congcong Li, Hai Lu, Franco Wong Dec 2019

Regulations And Brain Drain: Evidence From Wall Street Star Analysts’ Career Choices, Yuyan Guan, Congcong Li, Hai Lu, Franco Wong

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

The Global Settlement, along with related regulations in the early 2000s, prohibits the use of investment banking revenue to fund equity research and compensate equity analysts. We find that all-star analysts from investment banks are more likely to exit the profession or move to the buy side after the regulations. The departed star analysts’ earnings revisions and stock recommendations are more informative than those of the remaining analysts who followed the same companies. To the extent that star analysts are superior to their nonstar counterparts in terms of research ability and ability to inform the market, the exit of star …


Riding The Blockchain Mania: Public Firms’ Speculative 8-K Disclosures, Pengkai Lin Dec 2019

Riding The Blockchain Mania: Public Firms’ Speculative 8-K Disclosures, Pengkai Lin

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

This paper provides evidence on public firms' initial 8-K disclosures that mention Blockchain and investors' response to these disclosures. We categorize the description of Blockchain activities in firms' 8-Ks as Speculative (e.g., a vague future plan that involves Blockchain) or Existing (e.g., a description of Blockchain product). We document a sharp increase in the number of initial 8-K disclosures of Blockchain, particularly by Speculative firms, coinciding with the rise of Bitcoin prices and excitement in Blockchain technology in the last quarter of 2017. Investors react positively to the Blockchain 8-Ks issued by Speculative firms in the initial seven-day event window …


Spillover Effects Of Clients’ Tax Enforcement On Financial Statement Auditors: Evidence From A Discontinuity Design, Travis K. Chow, Jeffrey Pittman, Muzhi Wang, Le Zhao Nov 2019

Spillover Effects Of Clients’ Tax Enforcement On Financial Statement Auditors: Evidence From A Discontinuity Design, Travis K. Chow, Jeffrey Pittman, Muzhi Wang, Le Zhao

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We examine the impact of clients’ tax enforcement on financial statement auditors. In a regression discontinuity design, we exploit the firm-registration-date-based application of a new rule that assigns firms to two different tax enforcement regimes. Our analysis implies that auditors exert less effort–evident in lower audit fees and shorter audit report lags–when their clients are monitored by the more stringent tax authority. In results supporting that audit quality improves in this situation despite the fall in auditor effort, we report that clients subject to tougher tax enforcement exhibit a lower incidence of accounting restatements and tax-related restatements. Additionally, we find …


Examining Learning Transformation In Project-Based Learning Process, Gary Pan, Poh Sun Seow, Grace Koh Nov 2019

Examining Learning Transformation In Project-Based Learning Process, Gary Pan, Poh Sun Seow, Grace Koh

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

This paper presents a learning transformation framework for analyzing how learning evolves during project-based learning process. Here we adopt Lewin’s (1951) change theory as an analytical lens to examine the project-based learning curriculum at a University called UNI-X. This is a major contribution to PBL literature as little is known about the dynamics of learning during PBL process. In fact, the learning transformation framework can serve as the basis for further research in PBL process. For educators, this study provides them with useful insights on how to break project members’ escalating commitment to previous failing ideas and accept alternative workable …


That Could Have Been Me: Director Deaths, Mortality Salience And Ceo Prosocial Behavior, Guoli Chen, Craig Crossland, Sterling Huang Nov 2019

That Could Have Been Me: Director Deaths, Mortality Salience And Ceo Prosocial Behavior, Guoli Chen, Craig Crossland, Sterling Huang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Mortality salience—the awareness of the inevitability of death—is often traumatic. However, it can also be associated with a range of positive, self-transcendent cognitive responses, such as a greater desire to help others, contribute to society, and make a more meaningful contribution in one’s life and career. In this study, we provide evidence of a link between chief executive officer (CEO) mortality salience—triggered by the death of a director at the same firm—and a subsequent increase in firm-level prosocial behavior or corporate social responsibility (CSR). We further show that this core relationship is amplified in situations where the death of the …


More Than The Bottom Line, Edmund Keung, Themin Suwardy, Yew Kee Ho Oct 2019

More Than The Bottom Line, Edmund Keung, Themin Suwardy, Yew Kee Ho

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

In the second instalment of a three-part series on financial literacy, SMU Dean of Postgraduate Professional Programmes and Associate Professor of Accounting (Practice) Themin Suwardy, NUS Associate Professor of Accounting Edmund Keung and SIT Associate Provost and Professor of Accounting Ho Yew Kee discussed three important accounting concepts that investors need to understand in order to know how a company is performing financially.


Understanding The Connection Of Performance And Z-Scores For Manufacturing Firms In South Korea, S.L. Foo, Shaakalya Pathak Oct 2019

Understanding The Connection Of Performance And Z-Scores For Manufacturing Firms In South Korea, S.L. Foo, Shaakalya Pathak

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

South Korea is a key leading economy in the Asia Pacific region. This study examines the relationship between the financial health, as measured by the Altman Z-Score, and corporate performance, as measured by the Return on Equity (ROE), of listed manufacturing companies in this market. A linear regression has been conducted between these variables to determine the magnitude and direction of their relationships. The trends of Z-Scores over a five-year period have also been analysed. The analysis covers the period from 2013 to 2017 (inclusive) and yields a statistically positive correlation between ROE and the Z-Score for the market. South …


Family Firms And Labor Market Regulation, Morten Bennedsen, Sterling Huang, Hannes F. Wagner, Stefan Zeume Sep 2019

Family Firms And Labor Market Regulation, Morten Bennedsen, Sterling Huang, Hannes F. Wagner, Stefan Zeume

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

In a panel across twenty-eight countries over 10 years, we show that family firms on average enjoy performance advantages over nonfamily firms only when labor markets are less regulated. We confirm this result in a matched firm sample using a survey-based instrument as a family control. Furthermore, family firms exhibit lower variation in employment levels in less-regulated labor markets, supporting the notion that labor relations drive family firms’ performance advantages. Our results are consistent with the notion that both family ownership and labor market reforms provide employment protection and thus partly substitute as governance mechanisms.