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2005

Singapore Management University

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Articles 1 - 14 of 14

Full-Text Articles in Business

E-Government Capabilities And Crisis Management: Lessons From Combating Sars In Singapore, Shan Ling Pan, Gary Pan, Paul R. Devadoss Dec 2005

E-Government Capabilities And Crisis Management: Lessons From Combating Sars In Singapore, Shan Ling Pan, Gary Pan, Paul R. Devadoss

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

The city-state of Singapore has been highly ranked for its e-government services. Over the past two decades, it has leveraged its IT infrastructure for economic development and transformed its public services. The SARS outbreak in 2004 turned into a national health crisis because it spread rapidly and the medical community had little knowledge of how to treat the new mutation of the corona virus. Yet, several Singaporean government agencies utilized the e-Government infrastructure and related resources to quickly bring the outbreak under control. In particular, the government?s IT infrastructure streamlined communications, information exchange, and data flow, and significantly eased collaboration …

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Accounting Conservatism And Managerial Incentives, Young Koan Kwon Nov 2005

Accounting Conservatism And Managerial Incentives, Young Koan Kwon

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

There are two sources of agency costs under moral hazard: (1) distortions in incentive contracts and (2) implementation of suboptimal decisions. In the accounting literature, the relation between conservative accounting and agency costs of type (1) has received considerable attention (cf. Watts 2002). However, little appears to be known about the effects of accounting conservatism on agency costs of type (2) or trade-offs between agency costs of types (1) and (2). The purpose of this study is to examine this void. In a principal-agent setting in which the principal motivates the agent to expend effort using accounting earnings, this study …

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Separating The Effects Of Asymmetric Incentives And Inefficient Use Of Information On Financial Analysts' Consensus Earnings Forecast Errors, Stanimir Markov, Min Yen Tan Sep 2005

Separating The Effects Of Asymmetric Incentives And Inefficient Use Of Information On Financial Analysts' Consensus Earnings Forecast Errors, Stanimir Markov, Min Yen Tan

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Prior research on financial analysts’ consensus earnings forecast errors has tended to explore either incentives-based or inefficient information use-based explanations for the properties of the analysts’ forecast errors. This has limited our understanding of financial analysts’ expectation formation process as incentives and cognitive biases are likely to simultaneously affect the properties of the analysts’ consensus forecast errors. Our main contribution is in separating these two effects. In particular, using consensus quarterly earnings forecast data, we document that analysts have asymmetric loss function and that they do not fully use information about past earnings and forecast errors in minimizing their expected …

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Client, Industry And Country Factors Affecting Choice Of Big N Industry Expert Auditors, Michael Ettredge, Soo Young Kwon, Chee Yeow Lim Sep 2005

Client, Industry And Country Factors Affecting Choice Of Big N Industry Expert Auditors, Michael Ettredge, Soo Young Kwon, Chee Yeow Lim

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

This study investigates client choice of industry specialist auditors from among the Big N (Big 4 or 5) in an international (non-U.S.) setting. We investigate client-specific, industry-level and country-level factors hypothesized to enhance or decrease Big N clients' demand for industry expertise. Using data for 29 countries and 14 broad industries from 1993-2005, we find that international client choice of industry specialist Big N auditors is positively associated with client size, client growth opportunities, and client capital intensity. The choice of industry specialists from among the Big N is more prevalent in countries where levels of investor protection, quality of …

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Firm Ownership Structure And Intellectual Capital Disclosures, Stephen Firer, S. M. Williamson May 2005

Firm Ownership Structure And Intellectual Capital Disclosures, Stephen Firer, S. M. Williamson

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

The primary purpose of this study is to investigate the association between three ownership structure characteristics and voluntary intellectual capital (IC) disclosure practices. Data for this study is hand collected from the 2000 annual reports of 390 Singapore publicly traded firms. Empirical results indicate Singapore publicly traded firms more closely owned were less likely to voluntarily disclose IC related information than were those where executive directors had smaller holdings in the entity. Finally, findings indicate government linked corporations (GLCs) will likely make more voluntary IC disclosures than non-GLCs. Overall, this study makes several unique contributions to the literature. First, the …

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Audit Quality, Legal And Disclosure Environments, And Analysts' Forecast Accuracy: Some International Evidence, Jong-Hag Choi, Tony Kang, Young Koan Kwon, Yoonseok Zang May 2005

Audit Quality, Legal And Disclosure Environments, And Analysts' Forecast Accuracy: Some International Evidence, Jong-Hag Choi, Tony Kang, Young Koan Kwon, Yoonseok Zang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

In this study, we investigate the relation between the quality of external audit and earnings predictability of firms situated in different legal and disclosure environments around the world. In a sample of multinational firms cross-listed in the United States, we find that the association between audit quality and forecast accuracy is stronger in weak legal and disclosure environments than in strong legal and disclosure environments. We interpret these results as suggesting that audit service can serve as an alternative device to improve market participants' information environment in weak legal and disclosure environments.

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Information Systems Project Abandonment: A Stakeholder Analysis, Gary Shan Chi Pan Apr 2005

Information Systems Project Abandonment: A Stakeholder Analysis, Gary Shan Chi Pan

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

This case study reports on the experience of an organization in Singapore in implementing and eventually abandoning an electronic procurement project. By means of a stakeholder analysis, it examines stakeholders’ roles in the organization's decision to abandon the software project. This study uses Freeman's stakeholder analytical framework (Freeman, R. (1984). Strategic management: a stakeholder approach. Massachusetts: Pitman) to interpret data and develop four major findings. By providing a better understanding of project stakeholders’ perceptions, expectations and interrelationships during project development, this study presents researchers with a project abandonment evaluation framework that is enhanced with a stakeholder perspective. The lessons learned …

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Voluntary Decisions On Audit Committee Composition And Expertise And The Influence Of Board Of Director Characteristics: Further Evidence From Singapore, Jean-Luc Wolfgang Mitchell Van Der Zahn, Inderpal Singh Jan 2005

Voluntary Decisions On Audit Committee Composition And Expertise And The Influence Of Board Of Director Characteristics: Further Evidence From Singapore, Jean-Luc Wolfgang Mitchell Van Der Zahn, Inderpal Singh

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

No abstract provided.

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Equity Incentives And Earnings Management, Qiang Cheng, Terry Warfield Jan 2005

Equity Incentives And Earnings Management, Qiang Cheng, Terry Warfield

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

This paper examines the link between managers' equity incentives—arising from stock-based compensation and stock ownership—and earnings management. We hypothesize that managers with high equity incentives are more likely to sell shares in the future and this motivates these managers to engage in earnings management to increase the value of the shares to be sold. Using stock-based compensation and stock ownership data over the 1993–2000 time period, we document that managers with high equity incentives sell more shares in subsequent periods. As expected, we find that managers with high equity incentives are more likely to report earnings that meet or just …

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What Determines Residual Income?, Qiang Cheng Jan 2005

What Determines Residual Income?, Qiang Cheng

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

This paper investigates the determinants of residual income scaled by book value of equity, i.e., abnormal return on equity (ROE), by analyzing the impact of value-creation (economic rents) and value-recording (conservative accounting) processes on abnormal ROE. I rely on economic theories to characterize economic rents and develop an empirical measure—the conservative accounting factor—to capture the effect of conservative accounting. As expected, industry abnormal ROE increases with industry concentration, industry-level barriers to entry, and industry conservative accounting factors. Also as expected, the difference between firm and industry abnormal ROE increases with market share, firm size, firm-level barriers to entry, and firm …

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Intellectual Capital Performance And Cash-Based Incentive Payments: Impact Of Remuneration Committee And Corporate Governance Features, Jean-Luc Wolfgang Mitchell Van Der Zahn, Inderpal Singh, Alistair Brown Jan 2005

Intellectual Capital Performance And Cash-Based Incentive Payments: Impact Of Remuneration Committee And Corporate Governance Features, Jean-Luc Wolfgang Mitchell Van Der Zahn, Inderpal Singh, Alistair Brown

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

No abstract provided.

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Domestic And Foreign Earnings, Stock Return Variability, And The Impact Of Investor Sophistication, Dan Segal, Jeffrey L. Callen, Ole-Kristian Hope Jan 2005

Domestic And Foreign Earnings, Stock Return Variability, And The Impact Of Investor Sophistication, Dan Segal, Jeffrey L. Callen, Ole-Kristian Hope

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We examine the importance of foreign earnings relative to domestic earnings for a sample of U.S. multinationals using variance decomposition. Our methodology represents an alternative and complementary approach over the prior literature, which is based on traditional regressions and earnings response coefficients. We document that domestic earnings are more important in explaining the variance of unexpected returns than are foreign earnings and that the relative importance of domestic earnings is a decreasing function of investor sophistication. Last, we classify institutional investors as either short- or long-term oriented following Bushee [1998]. We find that the variance contribution of foreign earnings increases …

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The Role Of Analysts’ Forecasts In Accounting-Based Valuation: A Critical Evaluation, Qiang Cheng Jan 2005

The Role Of Analysts’ Forecasts In Accounting-Based Valuation: A Critical Evaluation, Qiang Cheng

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

This paper critically evaluates the use of analysts forecasts in accounting-based valuation. Specifically, I assess the usefulness and the limitation of analysts forecasts in predicting future earnings and in explaining the market-to-book ratio, in light of a comprehensive set of 22 explicit information items, including: economic rent proxies, conservative accounting proxies, earnings quality signals, transitory earnings proxies, industry characteristics, and risk and growth proxies. While analysts forecasts capture 45–83% of the information from these sources depending on model specifications, they do not appear to fully incorporate certain information items. In particular, proxies for conservative accounting and transitory earnings are incrementally …

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The Effects Of Sfas 131 Geographic Segment Disclosures On The Valuation Of Foreign Earnings, Ole-Kristian Hope, Tony Kang, Wayne Thomas, Florin Vasvari Jan 2005

The Effects Of Sfas 131 Geographic Segment Disclosures On The Valuation Of Foreign Earnings, Ole-Kristian Hope, Tony Kang, Wayne Thomas, Florin Vasvari

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Foreign operations are becoming increasingly important for U.S. companies. We investigate whether the market’s valuation of foreign earnings is a function of the firm’s geographic segment disclosures. Specifically, we examine the effects of an increase in the number of geographic segments disclosed and the inclusion of earnings measures in geographic segment disclosures following the adoption of SFAS 131. We find strong evidence that our proxies for increased disclosure are positively associated with the valuation of foreign earnings. Our results are robust to a number of sensitivity analyses. Taken together, our results suggest that the pricing of foreign earnings is associated …

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