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Full-Text Articles in Business

Does The Cessation Of Quarterly Earnings Guidance Reduce Investors’ Short-Termism?, Yongtae Kim, Lixin (Nancy) Su, Xindong (Kevin) Zhu Apr 2017

Does The Cessation Of Quarterly Earnings Guidance Reduce Investors’ Short-Termism?, Yongtae Kim, Lixin (Nancy) Su, Xindong (Kevin) Zhu

Accounting

The practice of providing quarterly earnings guidance has been criticized for encouraging investors to fixate on short-term earnings and encouraging managerial myopia. Using data from the post–Regulation Fair Disclosure period, we examine whether the cessation of quarterly earnings guidance reduces short-termism among investors. We show that, after guidance cessation, investors in firms that stop quarterly guidance are composed of a larger (smaller) proportion of long-term (short-term) institutions, put more (less) weight on long-term (short-term) earnings in firm valuation, become more (less) sensitive to analysts’ long-term (short-term) earning forecast revisions, and are less likely to dismiss chief executive officers for missing …


Languages And Earnings Management, Jaehyeon Kim, Yongtae Kim, Jian Zhou Apr 2017

Languages And Earnings Management, Jaehyeon Kim, Yongtae Kim, Jian Zhou

Accounting

We predict that managers of firms in countries where languages do not require speakers to grammatically mark future events perceive future consequences of earnings management to be more imminent, and therefore they are less likely to engage in earnings management. Using data from 38 countries, we find that accrual-based earnings management and real earnings management are less prevalent where there is weaker time disassociation in the language. Our study is the first to examine the relation between the grammatical structure of languages and financial reporting characteristics, and it extends the literature on the effect of informal institutions on corporate actions.


Country-Level Institutions, Firm Value, And The Role Of Corporate Social Responsibility Initiatives, Sadok El Ghoul, Omrane Guedhami, Yongtae Kim Apr 2017

Country-Level Institutions, Firm Value, And The Role Of Corporate Social Responsibility Initiatives, Sadok El Ghoul, Omrane Guedhami, Yongtae Kim

Accounting

Drawing on transaction cost theories and the resource-based view of a firm, we posit that the value of corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives is greater in countries where an absence of market-supporting institutions increases transaction costs and limits access to resources. Using a large sample of 11,672 firm-year observations representing 2445 unique firms from 53 countries during 2003–2010 and controlling for firm-level unobservable heterogeneity, we find supportive evidence that CSR is more positively related to firm value in countries with weaker market institutions. We also provide evidence on the channels through which CSR initiatives reduce transaction costs. We find that …


Is Institutional Ownership Related To Corporate Social Responsibility? The Nonlinear Relation And Its Implication For Stock Return Volatility, Maretno Harjoto, Hoje Jo, Yongtae Kim Oct 2015

Is Institutional Ownership Related To Corporate Social Responsibility? The Nonlinear Relation And Its Implication For Stock Return Volatility, Maretno Harjoto, Hoje Jo, Yongtae Kim

Accounting

This study examines the relation between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and institutional investor ownership, and the impact of this relation on stock return volatility. We find that institutional ownership does not strictly increase or decrease in CSR; rather, institutional ownership is a concave function of CSR. This evidence suggests that institutional investors do not see CSR as strictly value-enhancing activities. Institutional investors adjust their percentage of ownership when CSR activities go beyond the perceived optimal level. Employing the path analysis, we also examine the mediating effect of institutional ownership on the relation between CSR and stock return volatility. We find …


Management Earnings Forecasts And Value Of Analyst Forecast Revisions, Yongtae Kim, Minsup Song Jul 2015

Management Earnings Forecasts And Value Of Analyst Forecast Revisions, Yongtae Kim, Minsup Song

Accounting

This study examines the stock-price reactions to analyst forecast revisions around earnings announcements to test whether preannouncement forecasts reflect analysts' private information or piggybacking on confounding events and news. We find that management earnings forecasts influence the timing and precision of analyst forecasts. More importantly, evidence suggests that prior studies' finding of weaker (stronger) stock-price responses to forecast revisions in the period immediately after (before) the prior-quarter earnings announcement disappears once management earnings forecasts are controlled for. To the extent that management earnings forecasts are public disclosures, our results suggest that the importance of analysts' information discovery role documented in …


Common Auditors In M&A Transactions, Ye Cai, Yongtae Kim, Jong Chool Park, Hal D. White Feb 2015

Common Auditors In M&A Transactions, Ye Cai, Yongtae Kim, Jong Chool Park, Hal D. White

Accounting

We examine merger and acquisition (M&A) transactions in which the acquirer and the target share a common auditor. We predict that a common auditor can help merging firms reduce uncertainty throughout the acquisition process, which allows managers to more efficiently allocate their capital, resulting in higher quality M&As. Consistent with our prediction, we find that deals with common auditors have higher acquisition announcement returns than do non-common-auditor deals. Further, we find that the common-auditor effect is more pronounced for deals with greater pre-acquisition uncertainty and deals involving acquirers and targets that are audited by the same local office of the …


Ceo Equity Incentives And Audit Fees, Yongtae Kim, Haidan Li, Siqi Li Jan 2015

Ceo Equity Incentives And Audit Fees, Yongtae Kim, Haidan Li, Siqi Li

Accounting

This study examines whether CEO equity incentives have an impact on audit pricing. Prior studies investigate whether CEO equity incentives motivate executives to manage earnings for personal financial gains. Our focus is on whether auditors perceive CEO equity incentives to be associated with greater earnings manipulation risk and incorporate such risk in their pricing decisions. We find that CEO equity portfolio vega is positively related to audit fees after controlling for other determinants of audit fees, while equity portfolio delta is not significantly related to audit fees. This result holds after we account for potential endogeneity. The evidence suggests that …


Board Interlocks And The Diffusion Of Disclosure Policy, Ye Cai, Dan S. Dhaliwal, Yongtae Kim, Carrie Pan Sep 2014

Board Interlocks And The Diffusion Of Disclosure Policy, Ye Cai, Dan S. Dhaliwal, Yongtae Kim, Carrie Pan

Accounting

We examine whether board connections through shared directors influence firm disclosure policies. To overcome endogeneity challenges, we focus on an event that represents a significant change in firm disclosure policy: the cessation of quarterly earnings guidance. Our research design allows us to exploit the timing of director interlocks and therefore differentiate the director interlock effect on disclosure policy contagion from alternative explanations, such as endogenous director-firm matching or strategic board stacking. We find that firms are more likely to stop providing quarterly earnings guidance if they share directors with previous guidance stoppers. We also find that director-specific experience from prior …


Corporate Social Responsibility And Stock Price Crash Risk, Yongtae Kim, Haidan Li, Siqi Li Jun 2014

Corporate Social Responsibility And Stock Price Crash Risk, Yongtae Kim, Haidan Li, Siqi Li

Accounting

This study investigates whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) mitigates or contributes to stock price crash risk. Crash risk, defined as the conditional skewness of return distribution, captures asymmetry in risk and is important for investment decisions and risk management. If socially responsible firms commit to a high standard of transparency and engage in less bad news hoarding, they would have lower crash risk. However, if managers engage in CSR to cover up bad news and divert shareholder scrutiny, CSR would be associated with higher crash risk. Our findings support the mitigating effect of CSR on crash risk. We find that …


Are All Management Earnings Forecasts Created Equal? Expectations Management Versus Communication, Yongtae Kim, Myung Seok Park Dec 2012

Are All Management Earnings Forecasts Created Equal? Expectations Management Versus Communication, Yongtae Kim, Myung Seok Park

Accounting

Recent studies associate management earnings forecasts (MEFs) with expectations management. These studies, however, neither provide evidence on the extent and scope of expectations management through MEFs nor consider alternative incentives for issuing MEFs. Consequently, existing evidence does not help regulators assess whether MEFs effectively facilitate communication with investors. We investigate to what extent managers exploit their earnings forecasts as a tool of expectations management or as a communication device. By examining relations among MEFs, analysts' forecasts, and actual earnings, we classify MEFs into three incentive categories: (1) expectations management, (2) communication, and (3) other incentives. We find that a significant …


Analyst Vs. Market Forecasts Of Earnings Management To Avoid Small Losses, Michael Eames, Yongtae Kim Jun 2012

Analyst Vs. Market Forecasts Of Earnings Management To Avoid Small Losses, Michael Eames, Yongtae Kim

Accounting

Burgstahler and Eames (2003) present evidence that analysts commonly anticipate earnings management to avoid small losses, but often incorrectly predict its occurrence. Here we consider whether the market's behavior mimics that of analysts. Our results suggest that analysts exhibit more forecast optimism in their zero earnings forecasts than in their other small earnings forecast levels, and markets exhibit less relative optimism at this point. At the 271-360 day forecast horizon, we find a reduction in the earnings response coefficient at analysts' zero earnings forecasts and interpret this as reflecting less optimism in market earnings forecasts than in analyst forecasts when …


Does Eliminating The Form 20-F Reconciliation From Ifrs To U.S. Gaap Have Capital Market Consequences?, Yongtae Kim, Haidan Li, Siqi Li Feb 2012

Does Eliminating The Form 20-F Reconciliation From Ifrs To U.S. Gaap Have Capital Market Consequences?, Yongtae Kim, Haidan Li, Siqi Li

Accounting

This paper investigates the capital market consequences of the SEC's decision to eliminate the reconciliation requirement for cross-listed companies following International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). We find no evidence that the elimination has a negative impact on firms' market liquidity or probability of informed trading (PIN). We also find no evidence of a significant impact on cost of equity, analyst forecasts, institutional ownership, stock price efficiency and synchronicity. Moreover, IFRS users do not increase disclosure frequency nor supply the reconciliation voluntarily. Our results do not support the argument that eliminating the reconciliation results in information loss or greater information asymmetry. …


Do Corporations Invest Enough In Environmental Responsibility?, Yongtae Kim, Meir Statman Jan 2012

Do Corporations Invest Enough In Environmental Responsibility?, Yongtae Kim, Meir Statman

Accounting

Proponents of corporate environmental responsibility argue that corporations shortchange shareholders by investing too little in environmental responsibility. They claim that corporations can improve their financial performance by increasing their investment in environmental responsibility. Opponents of corporate social responsibility argue that corporations shortchange shareholders by investing too much in environmental responsibility. They claim that corporations can improve their financial performance by reducing their investment in environmental responsibility. Yet others claim that corporations serve their shareholders well by investing just enough in social responsibility, not too little and not too much. If so, corporations increase their investment in environmental responsibility when an …


Analyst Characteristics, Timing Of Forecast Revisions, And Analyst Forecasting Ability, Yongtae Kim, Gerald J. Lobo, Minsup Song Aug 2011

Analyst Characteristics, Timing Of Forecast Revisions, And Analyst Forecasting Ability, Yongtae Kim, Gerald J. Lobo, Minsup Song

Accounting

We first examine whether analysts with certain characteristics that prior research has identified are related to superior forecasting ability systematically time their forecast revisions later in the fiscal quarter. We then examine whether this superior ability persists after controlling for this timing advantage by using relative forecast error, a measure that largely eliminates the timing advantage of recent forecasts. Using a sample of quarterly earnings forecast revisions over the 20-year period from 1990 to 2009, we find that analysts with more firm-specific and general experience and more accurate prior-period forecasts, analysts employed by larger brokerage firms, and analysts who follow …


Polishing Diamonds In The Rough: The Sources Of Syndicated Venture Performance, Sanjiv R. Das, Hoje Jo, Yongtae Kim Apr 2011

Polishing Diamonds In The Rough: The Sources Of Syndicated Venture Performance, Sanjiv R. Das, Hoje Jo, Yongtae Kim

Accounting

Using an effort-sharing framework for VC syndicates, we assess how syndication impacts investment returns, chances of successful exit, and the time taken to exit. With data from 1980-2003, and applying apposite econometrics for endogeneity to these different performance measures, we are able to ascribe much of the better return to selection, with the value-addition by monitoring role significantly impacting the likelihood and time of exit. While the extant literature on Venture Capital (VC) syndication is divided about the relative importance of the "selection" and "value-add" hypotheses, we find that their roles are complementary.


Market Uncertainty And Disclosure Of Internal Control Deficiencies Under The Sarbanes-Oxley Act, Yongtae Kim, Myung Seok Park Sep 2009

Market Uncertainty And Disclosure Of Internal Control Deficiencies Under The Sarbanes-Oxley Act, Yongtae Kim, Myung Seok Park

Accounting

This study examines cross-sectional differences in stock market reactions to the disclosure of internal control deficiencies under Section 302 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. We hypothesize that the market punishment for internal control problems will be less severe for internal control disclosure that helps reduce market uncertainty around the disclosure. We also predict that such a relation is dependent on the types of disclosure and the market's prior knowledge of the credibility of firms' financial reporting. Consistent with our hypothesis, we find that when firms disclose their internal control deficiencies, their abnormal stock returns are negatively associated with changes in market …


Positive And Negative Information Transfers From Management Forecasts, Yongtae Kim, Michael Lacina, Myung Seok Park Sep 2008

Positive And Negative Information Transfers From Management Forecasts, Yongtae Kim, Michael Lacina, Myung Seok Park

Accounting

We examine positive and negative information transfers associated with management earnings and revenue forecasts. Positive information transfers are due to industry commonalities whereas negative information transfers are caused by competitive shifts. We argue that positive and negative intra-industry information transfers offset each other and lead to an overall finding of no information transfers even though they exist. We also conjecture that the type of information transfers from the same management forecast can be positive or negative based on the characteristics of the information receiver. We hypothesize positive information transfers to non-rival firms and negative information transfers to rivals. Consistent with …


Ethics And Disclosure: A Study Of The Financial Performance Of Firms In The Seasoned Equity Offerings Market, Hoje Jo, Yongtae Kim Jul 2008

Ethics And Disclosure: A Study Of The Financial Performance Of Firms In The Seasoned Equity Offerings Market, Hoje Jo, Yongtae Kim

Accounting

In this article, we examine the association between ethics and disclosure and the impact of this association on the long-term, post-issue performance of seasoned equity offerings (SEOs). We argue that firms with extensive disclosure are less likely to face information problems, and more likely to lead to active shareholder monitoring, and therefore, engage in fewer unethical activities, such as aggressive earnings manipulation, and have better long-term, post-issue performance. Consistent with these predictions, this study presents evidence that disclosure is negatively related to unethical earnings manipulation and positively associated with long-term, post-issue performance. In particular, we find that long-term, post-issue SEO …


Bankruptcy Probability Changes And The Differential Informativeness Of Bond Upgrades And Downgrades, Yongtae Kim, Sandeep Nabar Dec 2007

Bankruptcy Probability Changes And The Differential Informativeness Of Bond Upgrades And Downgrades, Yongtae Kim, Sandeep Nabar

Accounting

Prior studies have found that stock returns around announcements of bond upgrades are insignificant, but that stock prices respond negatively to announcements of bond downgrades. This asymmetric stock market reaction suggests either that bond downgrades are timelier than upgrades, or that voluntary disclosures by managers preempt upgrades but not downgrades. This study investigates these conjectures by examining changes in firms' probabilities of bankruptcy (assessed using bankruptcy prediction models) and voluntary disclosure activity around rating change announcements. The results indicate that the assessed probability of bankruptcy decreases before bond upgrades, but not after. By contrast, the assessed probability of bankruptcy increases …


Disclosure Frequency And Earnings Management, Hoje Jo, Yongtae Kim May 2007

Disclosure Frequency And Earnings Management, Hoje Jo, Yongtae Kim

Accounting

We examine the relation between disclosure frequency and earnings management,and the impact of this relation on post-issue performance, for a sample of seasoned equityofferings (SEOs). We contend that firms with extensive disclosure are less likely to faceinformation problems, leading to less earnings management and better post-issueperformance. Our results confirm that disclosure frequency is inversely related toearnings management and positively associated with post-issue performance. We alsofind that transparency-reducing disclosure is concentrated in firms that substantially, buttemporarily, increase disclosure prior to the offering. Such firms exhibit more earningsmanagement and poorer post-SEO stock performance, on average.JEL classification:G14; G24; G32; M41


Underwriter Choice And Earnings Management: Evidence From Seasoned Equity Offerings, Hoje Jo, Yongtae Kim, Myung Seok Park Mar 2007

Underwriter Choice And Earnings Management: Evidence From Seasoned Equity Offerings, Hoje Jo, Yongtae Kim, Myung Seok Park

Accounting

Using a sample of seasoned equity offerings (SEOs), this paper examines the association between the choice of financial intermediary and earnings management. We contend that with more stringent standards for certification and intense monitoring, highly prestigious underwriters restrict firms' incentives for earnings management to protect their reputation and to avoid potential litigation risks, while firms with greater incentives for earnings management avoid strict monitoring by choosing low-quality underwriters. Consistent with our predictions, we find an inverse association between underwriter quality and issuers' earnings management. In addition, we find that underwriter quality is positively related to SEOs' post-issue performance, even after …


Pricing Of Seasoned Equity Offers And Earnings Management, Yongtae Kim, Myung Seok Park Jun 2005

Pricing Of Seasoned Equity Offers And Earnings Management, Yongtae Kim, Myung Seok Park

Accounting

This study examines the relationship between earnings management by firms offering seasoned equity issues and the pricing of their offers. We hypothesize that seasoned equity offering (SEO) firms employing aggressive accounting decisions also more aggressively push up their offer prices, thereby leading to a decrease in the degree of underpricing. Consistent with our prediction (the issuer's greed hypothesis), evidence indicates that SEO firms making opportunistic accounting decisions issue new shares at inflated prices. Our findings remain robust after controlling for other determinants of SEO underpricing and the possible endogeneity of pricing and earnings management.