Accounting Commons^™

Impartial Intelligence? Evidence Of Country-Label Sensitivity In Ai Financial Analysis, Fabio Motoki, Jedson Pinto

School of Accountancy Faculty Publications

This study examines whether large language models exhibit systematic country-contingent differential treatment in financial fraud detection. Analyzing 30,000 synthetic transactions with identical statistical properties across three country attributions (United States, Great Britain, and China), we find LLMs assign significantly higher fraud probabilities to Chinese-attributed transactions (36.2%) compared to Western countries (≈30–31%), resulting in accuracy disparities of 67% versus 74%. The gap remains stable across five independent experimental replications and persists when using Chinese language prompts, ruling out linguistic effects. Bias mitigation strategies, such as requiring explanations or explicit country neutrality instructions, reduce but fail to eliminate these disparities. Testing across …

The Questioning Of Special Items During Conference Calls: High Quality Or Highly Questionable?, Jiajia Fu, Yuan Ji, James Potepa

School of Accountancy Faculty Publications

Accounting standards require firms to distinguish recurring revenues and expenses from nonrecurring gains and losses, which are often referred to as special items. However, not all special items are genuinely nonrecurring. Exploiting the setting of earnings conference calls, we explore whether analysts can identify opportunistic special items, as evidenced by asking for more information about them. We find evidence that managers' discussions of special items more often relate to predicted special items, whereas analysts have more questions about potentially opportunistic special items. Managers adopt a relatively more negative tone and use more words when answering questions about potentially opportunistic special …

Brand Capital And Trade Credit Policy, Akinloye Akindayomi, Md. Ruhul Amin

School of Accountancy Faculty Publications

We proxy for customer awareness and perception of firms' range and types of products/services to examine the relation between a firm’s brand capital and its trade credit policies. We find that firms with higher stock of brand capital increase their use of supplier credit while decreasing extension of customer credit. These effects are more pronounced in firms facing higher financing constraints and those operating in a higher product market competition environment. We also document the impact of brand capital on working capital management. Overall, this study provides evidence that links brand capital with corporate trade credit policies and financing outcomes.

Disproportionate Insider Control And The Cost Of Equity Capital: Evidence From U.S. Dual-Class Firms, Barry Hettler, Arno Forst, Lindsay Baran

School of Accountancy Faculty Publications

We investigate the cost of equity capital for U.S. dual-class firms. While prior literature finds a positive association between excess insider control and the cost of capital in international contexts, these results are primarily concentrated in countries with relatively weak investor protection and legal enforcement. It is therefore an open question whether these findings hold for the U.S. capital market. Additionally, we investigate a possible moderating role of the firm’s information environment on the association between disproportionate insider control and the cost of capital. We find the cost of equity capital for U.S. dual-class firms is, on average, approximately forty …

Accounting Comparability And Value Relevance Of Accounting Information: Evidence From A Change In Revenue And Expense Recognition Rules, Brandon Ater, Emrah Ekici, Thomas Noland, Christian K. Sobngwi

School of Accountancy Faculty Publications

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the accounting comparability and value relevance implications of the changes in the accounting for freight services in-process introduced through the adoption of EITF No. 91-9.

Design/methodology/approach: This is an empirical archival research paper using financial statement data and stock price information for the US transportation companies.

Findings: The results indicate that following the adoption of EITF No. 91-9, there is an increase in the level of accounting comparability for firms in the US transportation industries. This paper also finds that the reduction in the number of reporting options for revenues and …

Dark Tetrad Personality And Earnings Management: The Moderating Effect Of Corporate Reputation, Alan Diógenes Góis, Gerlando Augusto Sampaio Franco De Lima, Márcia Martins Mendes De Luca, Giorgio Gotti

School of Accountancy Faculty Publications

Objective: The purpose of this study is to investigate the moderating effect of corporate reputation on the relationship between the Dark Tetrad personality and earnings management.

Method: Two approaches were adopted: one archival and one experimental. In the archival approach, 434 firms (2,645 observations) headquartered in the US were analyzed, covering the period 2010-2017. Earnings management was proxied by accruals quality, reputation was proxied by the score on the ranking of the World’s Most Admired Companies, and Dark Tetrad personality was based on CEO speech and ‘Big Five’ personality analysis. In the experimental approach, we used a 2x2 between-subjects design …

One Hundred Years Of The U.S. Tax Court (1924-2024): An Examination Of The Tribunal, Its Judges, And Firms’ Involvement In Tax Litigation, Rolando Daniel Sanchez

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three interrelated essays on the U.S. Tax Court. The first essay examines the institutional background of the U.S. Tax Court (formerly the Board of Tax Appeals), thereby framing its importance and history. Focused on the factors that gave rise to the Board of Tax Appeals, this essay begins by distilling prior histories and discussing the circumstances that birthed the institution. Next, the paper expounds on early proponents of the Board of Tax Appeals, such as the American Mining Congress and key individuals therein. Specifically, I propose strong influence for the formation of the Board of Tax …

The Role Of Shareholder Derivative Lawsuits In Accounting: Impacts On Corporate Information Quality And Audit Fee Determination, Md Zubair Zuven

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation consists of two essays on shareholder derivative lawsuit issues in accounting. In the first essay, I investigate the causal effect of shareholder litigation rights on information quality by using the staggered adoption of universal demand (UD) laws as an exogenous variation in litigation risk. My empirical findings from the difference-in-differences methodology align with the theory that shareholder litigation risk plays a deterrence role and acts as a corporate governance mechanism. I find a significant drop in information quality measures for firms incorporated in states that adopted UD laws, which is consistent with the notion that higher (lower) shareholder …

Free Cash Flows And Price Momentum, Jiajia Fu, Fangming Xu, Cheng Zeng, Lily Zheng

School of Accountancy Faculty Publications

This study investigates the role of free cash flows and (cross-sectional and time-series) price momentum in predicting future stock returns. Past returns and free cash flows each positively predict future stock returns after controlling for the other, suggesting that cash flows and momentum both contain valuable and distinctive information about future stock returns. A strategy of buying past winners with high free cash flows and shorting past losers with low free cash flows significantly outperforms the traditional momentum trading strategy. The enhanced performance is not sensitive to investor sentiment, time variations, or transaction costs. Further analysis shows that the incremental …

Digital Transformation's Impact On Innovation In Private Enterprises: Evidence From China, Li Chen, Ruixiang Tu, Boxuan Huang, Haiyan Zhou, Yumei Wu

School of Accountancy Faculty Publications

In the digital economy era, the pathways of digital transformation and intelligent development have emerged as crucial avenues for enterprises’ high-quality development. Focusing on listed private enterprises from 2011 to 2020, this study uses text mining to extract keywords related to digital transformation, as disclosed in annual reports. We construct a digital transformation index and empirically examine its impact on enterprise innovation and innovation incentive policies’ synergistic effects. The results demonstrate that digital transformation significantly promotes innovation in private enterprises, with a more pronounced catalytic effect in economically developed regions characterised by higher levels of the digital economy and larger …

Proving Their Mettle: Managerial Ability And Firm Performance In Trying Times, Barry Hettler, James Cordeiro, Arno Forst

School of Accountancy Faculty Publications

This study investigates the impact of trying economic times, i.e., periods of economic decline and uncertainty, on managerial ability. We find that trying economic times positively moderate the association between managerial ability and firm profitability. Consistent with these primary findings, we also find that the positive moderating role of economic decline and uncertainty on the ability-performance relationship is most salient in procyclical industries. Our results are robust across multiple measures of economically trying times and managerial ability. Further analyses indicate that in trying times more capable managers generate stronger performance through both improved asset turnover and profit margins.

Irs Scrutiny And Corporate Innovation, Nathan Goldman, Niklas Lampenius, Suresh Radhakrishnan, Arthur Stenzel, José Elias Feres De Almeida

School of Accountancy Faculty Publications

The IRS administers tax laws enacted by Congress. As part of the IRS's duties, they often consider taxpayers' financial statements to help ensure accurate tax reporting and payments. We posit that enhanced financial statement disclosures of tax information under FASB Interpretation Number 48 (FIN 48) lead to more IRS scrutiny and alter the incentives for corporate innovation. Using patent applications as a measure of corporate innovation, we employ a difference-in-differences research design with publicly listed US firms as the treatment group and privately held US firms not subject to the disclosure requirements as the control group. We find robust evidence …

Effects Of Firm Life Cycle On Matching And Accrual Quality, Ana Mariella Bandeira, José Elias Feres De Almeida

School of Accountancy Faculty Publications

This study examines the effects of life cycle stages on the quality of revenue-expense matching and accruals of Brazilian public listed companies, and how matching affects accrual quality. Studies on the effects of firm life cycle stages on revenue-expense matching are still incipient. Furthermore, there is no prior study interconnecting the two conceptual and empirical models in a joint perspective. The study brings evidence that firm life cycle is a relevant factor in the analysis of the association between revenues and expenses and accruals with operating cash flows. This association, if properly carried out by firms, can benefit investors, analysts, …

Climate Policy Uncertainty And Corporate Tax Avoidance, Md Ruhul Amin, Akinloye Akindayomi, Md Showaib Rahman Sarker, Rafiqul Bhuyan

School of Accountancy Faculty Publications

Highlights

• This study investigates the relation between climate policy uncertainty and corporate tax avoidance.

• Firms undertake aggressive tax avoidance strategies during periods of heightened climate policy uncertainty.

• Further analysis indicates that cash savings from lower tax payments are used to pay dividends and not retained for reinvestment.

• Findings are consistent with the precautionary hypothesis that firms become more (i) conservative in their long-term investment strategies and (ii) risk-averse during periods of elevated climate policy uncertainty.

Abstract

This study examines the relation between climate policy uncertainty and corporate tax avoidance. Using a novel measure of climate policy uncertainty (CPU), we document …

Do Community Banks In Fast-Growing Metropolitan Areas Outperform Rural Community Banks?, Nicole A. Morrison

School of Accountancy Faculty Publications

Prior research found that community banks in rural areas outperformed community banks in metropolitan areas in terms of pre-tax return on assets and the variables contributing to it. However, a study on community banks by the FDIC in 2020 mentioned that community banks in the fastest growing metropolitan areas from 2010 through 2020 performed better than those in other metropolitan areas without comparing that performance to rural community banks. This study addresses that gap using a 2014 dataset and finds that, on average, community banks in the fastest-growing metropolitan statistical areas do not outperform rural community banks. The summary data …

To Cancel Debt Or Not To Cancel Debt: Evaluation Of Debt Cancellation Or Provide A Tax Credit, Jose Jay Vega, Jan Smolarski, Nikki Shoemaker, Kelly Noe

School of Accountancy Faculty Publications

U.S. students are facing unprecedented student loan debt levels, roughly $1.75 trillion. The Biden Administration is proposing a debt relief program that will cancel student loan debt up to $20,000 for Pell Granted individuals. However, the current plan has faced substantial legal challenges and political pressure, and as suggested, it could increase the current inflation crisis. However, the size of the inflation effect is subject to debate. On the lower end, student debt relief may add only about 0.2% points to annual inflation. Proponents have also circulated linking student loan repayment to income levels. We propose an alternative approach to …

Strategic Use Of Volume Of Financial Items In 10-K Reports, C. S. A. Cheng, Jiajia Fu, Wenli Huang, Jiao Jing

School of Accountancy Faculty Publications

We investigate whether firms limit the volume of financial items in annual reports (including the financial statements and footnotes) to obfuscate poor future firm performance, and how investors react to this reduced volume. We estimate abnormal volume to capture managers’ discretion over reporting in the 10-K and find that abnormally low volume predicts poor future earnings. This relation is more pronounced in firms where the market has difficulty in detecting managerial intervention in the disclosure process. We also find that abnormally low volume predicts negative future returns, suggesting that managers benefit from disclosing fewer financial items by delaying the incorporation …

The Great Sell-Side Sell-Off: Evidence Of Declining Financial Analyst Coverage, Barry Hettler, Justyna Skomra, Arno Forst

School of Accountancy Faculty Publications

Purpose

Motivated by significant global developments affecting the sell-side industry, in particular a shift toward passive investments and growing regulation, this study examines whether financial analyst coverage declined over the past decade and if any loss of analyst coverage is associated with a change in forecast accuracy.

Design/methodology/approach

After investigating, and confirming, a general decline in analyst following, the authors calculate the loss of analyst coverage relative to the firm-specific maximum between 2009 and 2013. In multivariate analyses, the authors then examine whether this loss of coverage differs across geographic region, firm size and capital market development, and whether it …

Ceo Marital Status And Dividend Policy, Md Noman Hossain, Monika K. Rabarison, Brandon Ater, Christian K. Sobngwi

School of Accountancy Faculty Publications

We investigate whether and how CEO marital status is related to dividend policy. We find that firms run by single CEOs are less likely to pay dividends. Further analyses reveal that the aforementioned relation is stronger for single CEOs who are more risk-seeking, have compensation packages with lower pay-performance sensitivity, are less conservative, or are less engaged in corporate social responsibility activities. Our results hold in multiple robustness and endogeneity tests, including propensity score matching, difference-in-differences estimation, and an instrumental variable regression. Overall, our findings contribute to the literature highlighting the importance of CEOs' personal attributes for corporate decisions.

Living Up To Your Codes? Corporate Codes Of Ethics And The Cost Of Equity Capital, Hong Kim Duong, Marco Fasan, Giorgio Gotti

School of Accountancy Faculty Publications

Purpose

Previous literature provides mixed evidence about the effectiveness of a code of ethics in limiting managerial opportunism. While some studies find that code of ethics is merely window-dressing, others find that they do influence managers' behavior. The present study investigates whether the quality of a code of ethics decreases the cost of equity by limiting managerial opportunism.

Design/methodology/approach

In order to test the hypothesis, the authors perform an empirical analysis on a sample of US companies in the 2004–2012 period. The results are robust to a battery of robustness analyses that the authors performed in order to take care …

Code Of Ethics Quality And Audit Fees, Hong Kim Duong, Giorgio Gotti, Michael T. Stein, Anthony Chen

School of Accountancy Faculty Publications

Using a sample of U.S. firms from 2003 to 2018, we examine the effect of an audit client’s code of ethics quality on audit fees. We find that clients with a lower code of ethics quality pay significantly higher audit fees, suggesting that auditors perceive such clients as riskier and charge greater risk premiums. We also find that such clients have higher litigation risk and auditors spend greater effort when auditing such clients. Our study is among the first to demonstrate the role of a client’s code of ethics quality in audit pricing. Overall, our findings are consistent with …

Does Business Strategy Affect Dividend Payout Policies?, Akinloye Akindayomi, Md Ruhul Amin

School of Accountancy Faculty Publications

This study examines the relation between a firm's business strategy and its dividend payout policies. Using a comprehensive measure of business strategy based on Miles and Snow's (1978, 2003) theoretical framework, we find that a firm's business strategy affects its dividend payout policies. Specifically, we document that firms following an innovation-oriented business strategy (PROSPECTORS) are less likely to pay, initiate, and increase dividends than those following a cost-effective business strategy (DEFENDERS). We also identify operating cash flow volatility and financial covenant constraints as two potential mechanisms through which innovation-oriented business strategy influences dividend payout policies. The …

Dual-Class Share Structure And Innovation, Lindsay Baran, Arno Forst, M. Tony Via

School of Accountancy Faculty Publications

Using a sample of dual-class firms matched with single-class firms possessing similar antitakeover protection, we find a positive association between disproportionate insider control and patent output, quality, creativity, research and development efficiency, and chief executive officer innovative risk taking. We also find, however, that the positive effects of disproportionate control on innovation are concentrated in financially constrained firms and firms in highly competitive industries, and that the positive effects dissipate within 10 years after the initial public offering. Most important, the positive effect of dual-class structures for innovation is conditional on the presence of innovative insiders in the firm. These …

Why Do Employees Commit Fraud? Theory, Measurement, And Validation, Bin Lin, Junqin Huang, Youliang Liao, Shanmin Liu, Haiyan Zhou

School of Accountancy Faculty Publications

Previous research on corporate governance has extensively explored the motives of corporate fraud. However, this research has paid little attention to employees, the real executors of fraud, resulting in the psychological and behavioral decision-making process of employees who commit fraud in enterprises becoming a "black box" that has not yet been opened. Based on the theory of planned behavior, our study integrates the existing research findings on driving factors of employee fraud and anti-fraud practical experience, extracts the key factors of employee fraud motive, and develops a multidimensional scale of employee fraud motive. The exploratory factor analysis (EFA) generates three …

Media As Other Information For Fundamental Valuation, Jiajia Fu, Jingran Zhao

School of Accountancy Faculty Publications

The media is an important information intermediary. We investigate the informational role of the media by examining whether media content, measured by the sentiment of news articles, contains information about a firm’s fundamental value beyond that conveyed in earnings, book value, and analyst forecasts. We show that incorporating media content into Ohlson’s (1995) residual income model generally improves its ability to predict future residual income, explain current stock prices, and predict future stock prices. Our results are strengthened when media coverage is higher and when media sentiment is more dispersed

The Contagion Effect Of Compensation Regulation: Evidence From China, Jun Shao, Haiyan Zhou, Na Gong, Junzi Zhang

School of Accountancy Faculty Publications

To shed light on whether and how firms changed compensation practices in response to a shift in the environment in which they operated, we examine whether there is contagion effect of executive compensation regulation on state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in the emerging market of China. Specifically, we investigate whether firms not directly affected by the changing regulatory environment nonetheless changed executive compensation in response to the actions of the directly affected firms, which is called contagion effect. We further examine the specific contagion mechanisms and the economic consequences of regulation on compensation. We find that the regulation has a significant effect …

Excess Insider Control And Corporate Social Responsibility: Evidence From Dual-Class Firms, Barry Hettler, Arno Forst, James Cordeiro, Stacy Chavez

School of Accountancy Faculty Publications

We investigate the corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance of firms with a dual-class share structure. Dual-class firms, which represent a fast-growing segment of the U.S. capital market, violate the "one share, one vote" principle by giving corporate insiders control in excess of their economic interest in the firm. We observe a negative association of excess insider control and firms’ CSR performance, primarily with respect to the community- and employee-related dimensions of CSR. Extended analyses reveal that this negative association is mitigated by high financial resource availability. Consistent with a trade-off between corporate spending on CSR or on benefits for insiders, …

The Power Of Unrequited Love: The Parasocial Relationship, Trust, And Organizational Identification Between Middle-Level Managers And Ceos, Youliang Liao, Bin Lin, Haiyan Zhou, Xi Yang

School of Accountancy Faculty Publications

Previous studies have found that CEOs manage their firms through traditional methods such as leadership and management practices. In this study, we investigate how the parasocial relationship (PSR) between middle-level managers and CEOs affects the organizational trust and the organizational identification (OI) of middle managers. We find that the PSR between middle managers and CEOs has a positive effect on the OI of middle managers, which is mediated by the organizational trust of middle managers.

Purpose: Middle managers and CEOs are the key components of a firm and are crucial to firm strategies and control systems. Middle managers play a …

Do The Specific Countries In Which A Multinational Corporation Operates Affect Its Private Loan Contracts?, Brandon Ater, Bowe Hansen

School of Accountancy Faculty Publications

Previous research has shown that higher levels of firm globalization lead to a lower cost of private debt. However, this research generally treats globalization as a homogeneous attribute ignoring the specific countries in which a multinational corporation (MNC) operates. Using a sample of U.S. MNCs from 1999 through 2017, we relax this assumption and find that while the results from prior research hold with regards to the level of an MNC’s operations in segments reported at the regional or continent-wide level, the level of an MNC’s operations in countries with low institutional quality is associated with a higher cost of …

Language In Economics And Accounting Research: The Role Of Linguistic History, Giorgio Gotti, Seán G. Roberts, Marco Fasan, Cole B. J. Robertson

School of Accountancy Faculty Publications

This paper investigates whether a consideration of linguistic history is important when studying the relationship between economic and linguistic behaviors. Several recent economic studies have suggested that differences between languages can affect the way people think and behave (linguistic relativity or Sapir–Whorf hypothesis). For example, the way a language obliges one to talk about the future might influence intertemporal decisions, such as a company’s earnings management. However, languages have historical relations that lead to shared features—they do not constitute independent observations. This can inflate correlations between variables if not dealt with appropriately (Galton’s problem). We discuss this problem …