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作者：Wu, Donghui; Ye, Qing
作者单位：Chinese University of Hong Kong; Chinese University of Hong Kong; Nanjing University
摘要：Adverse client publicity can entail regulatory scrutiny over audited financial statements and impose political costs on auditors. We use the changes in client publicity caused by their controlling owners' presence on the Hurun Rich List (the rich listing) in China to test the hypothesis that auditor conservatism increases with client publicity. Our evidence indicates auditors issue more adverse audit opinions to clients and charge higher fees following the rich listing events. Moreover, we obs...
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作者：Gillette, Jacquelyn R.; Samuels, Delphine; Zhou, Frank S.
作者单位：Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); University of Pennsylvania
摘要：This paper examines how credit rating levels affect municipal debt issuers' disclosure decisions. Using exogenous upgrades in credit rating levels caused by the recalibration of Moody's municipal ratings scale in 2010, we find that upgraded municipalities significantly reduce their disclosure of required continuing financial information, relative to unaffected municipalities. Consistent with a reduction in debtholders' demand for information driving these results, the reduction in disclosure i...
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作者：Schoenfeld, Jordan
作者单位：Dartmouth College
摘要：Theory predicts the existence of explicit bilateral contracts between firms and expert shareholders. I assemble and analyze a large-scale data set of these contracts. Using block investments from 1996 to 2018, I find that these contracts involve mainly corporate owners and activist owners, and often specify covenants pertaining to financing, trading, directorships, dividends, joint ventures, corporate investment, financial reporting, and information access. I also find that some of the contrac...
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作者：Bourveau, Thomas; She, Guoman; Zaldokas, Alminas
作者单位：Columbia University; Hong Kong University of Science & Technology
摘要：We empirically study how collusion in product markets affects firms' financial disclosure strategies. We find that after a rise in cartel enforcement, U.S. firms start sharing more detailed information in their financial disclosure about their customers, contracts, and products. This new information potentially benefits peers by helping to tacitly coordinate actions in product markets. Indeed, changes in disclosure are associated with higher future profitability. Our results highlight the pote...
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作者：He, Jie; Tian, Xuan; Yang, Huan; Zuo, Luo
作者单位：University System of Georgia; University of Georgia; Tsinghua University; University of Massachusetts System; University of Massachusetts Amherst; Cornell University
摘要：Costs are sticky on average, that is, they fall less for sales decreases than they rise for equivalent sales increases. We examine the effect of this asymmetric cost behavior on a firm's dividend policy. Given investors' aversion to dividend cuts, we predict that firms with higher resource adjustment costs and stickier costs pay lower dividends than their peers because they are less able to sustain any higher level of dividend payouts in the future. We find evidence consistent with this predic...
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作者：Ahmed, Anwer S.; Li, Yiwen; Xu, Nina
作者单位：Texas A&M University System; Texas A&M University College Station; University of Connecticut
摘要：Using a natural experiment (the SEC's 2016 Tick Size Pilot Program), we investigate the effects of an increase in tick size on financial reporting quality. The tick size pilot program reduces algorithmic trading (AT) and increases fundamental investors' information acquisition and trading activities. This in turn increases the scrutiny of managers' financial reporting choices and reduces their incentives to engage in misreporting. Using a difference-in-differences research design, we find a si...
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作者：Lennox, Clive; Wang, Chunfei; Wu, Xi
作者单位：University of Southern California; Central University of Finance & Economics; Central University of Finance & Economics
摘要：Audit firms need to provide high-quality audits but they also need to please their clients. We argue that these conflicting incentives become manifest when comparing the incentive effects of equity ownership on engagement quality (EQ) reviewers and audit engagement partners. We predict that EQ reviewers monitor audit quality more closely when they hold greater ownership. In contrast, we expect that equity ownership has conflicting effects on the incentives of engagement partners because they n...
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作者：Bao, Yang; Ke, Bin; Li, Bin; Yu, Y. Julia; Zhang, Jie
作者单位：Shanghai Jiao Tong University; National University of Singapore; Wuhan University; University of Virginia; Nanyang Technological University
摘要：We develop a state-of-the-art fraud prediction model using a machine learning approach. We demonstrate the value of combining domain knowledge and machine learning methods in model building. We select our model input based on existing accounting theories, but we differ from prior accounting research by using raw accounting numbers rather than financial ratios. We employ one of the most powerful machine learning methods, ensemble learning, rather than the commonly used method of logistic regres...
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作者：Lisowsky, Petro; Minnis, Michael
作者单位：Boston University; University of Chicago
摘要：This study uses a comprehensive panel of tax returns to examine the financial reporting choices of medium-to-large private U.S. firms, a setting that controls over $9 trillion in capital, vastly outnumbers public U.S. firms across all industries, yet has no financial reporting mandates. We find that nearly two-thirds of these firms do not produce audited GAAP financial statements. Guided by an agency theory framework, we find that size, ownership dispersion, external debt, and trade credit are...
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作者：Soltes, Eugene
作者单位：Harvard University
摘要：In an effort to motivate firms to more rapidly detect potential misconduct, legislators, regulators, and enforcement agencies incentivize firms to have integrity or whistleblowing hotlines. These hotlines provide individuals an opportunity to report alleged misconduct and seek guidance about how to appropriately respond. Beyond some isolated examples, little is known about the responsiveness of hotlines to actual claims of alleged misconduct. I undertake a field study to investigate how hotlin...
