China Journal of Accounting Research最新文献

We examine stakeholders’ comment letters regarding the Hong Kong Exchange’s (HKEX) 2015 Consultation Paper, which proposed mandating ESG reporting in Hong Kong. We test for significant differences in responses between stakeholder groups and whether the HKEX’s decision was consistent with stakeholders’ preferences in the consultation process. Examining comment letters submitted by six lobbying groups—preparers, investors, the accounting profession, NGOs, other institutions and individuals—we analyze survey responses using textual analysis software and statistical tests. We find that users and the accounting profession participated more than preparers. We also find that preparers and users took different positions on mandating ESG reporting when lobbying the HKEX, whereas preparers and the accounting profession advocated similar positions. Moreover, we find a significant association between stakeholder groups’ preferences and the HKEX’s decision on most proposed changes.

This paper explores the positive governance effects of the Procuratorate’s Public Interest Litigation System in China, which combines the powers of litigation and administrative supervision, on the quality of information disclosure by listed state-owned enterprises. We report several findings. (1) The likelihood that listed state-owned enterprises would issue financial restatements and participate in financial fraud decreased significantly in areas selected for pilot implementation. (2) The governance effect is stronger in regulated industries than in unregulated industries. After the pilot implementation, the agency costs decreased, and the increase in legal litigation risks related to false statements faced by enterprises played a deterrent effect. (3) The significance of the above results is stronger when a company’s external and internal governance are weaker. This study provides both new evidence of the effectiveness of the integrated governance mechanism and inspiration for future efforts to widely implement this mechanism in the capital market.

Drawing on the implementation of the compliance management guidelines issued by China’s SASACs, we construct a quasi-natural experiment to examine the impact of the implementation of these guidelines on the investment efficiency of SOEs. The investment efficiency of SOEs is significantly improved after the implementation of the guidelines. The impact is more pronounced on SOEs with significant financing constraints, high financing requirements and intense competition in the product market. We also find that the guidelines improve efficiency investment by reducing management’s risk appetite, mitigating the Type I agency problems and enhancing the level of internal control. The conclusions indicate that compliance management is an important strategy for enhancing the investment efficiency of SOEs.

This paper empirically examines how sustainability-oriented social responsibility influences corporate innovation quantity and radical innovation from the perspectives of environment- and employee-oriented social responsibility. Both forms of social responsibility are found to contribute significantly to corporate innovation. Corporate environment-oriented responsibility increases innovation by increasing R&D. Employee-oriented responsibility increases innovation by helping firms retain talent; by motivating employees, employee-oriented social responsibility promotes both innovation quantity and radical innovation. Furthermore, both environment- and employee-oriented responsibility can alleviate financing constraints, and the positive effects of environment- and employee-oriented responsibility on radical innovation and innovation quantity, respectively, increase total factor productivity. Following sustainable development theory, this paper analyzes the heterogeneous mechanisms of the influences of environment- and employee-oriented social responsibility on corporate innovation and provides empirical evidence of high-quality, innovation-driven corporate development through social responsibility.

Using rumor verification data from investor interactive platforms, we investigate the effect of stock market rumors on price efficiency. We find favorable rumors are positively correlated with stock price synchronicity, while unfavorable rumors are negatively correlated with stock price synchronicity. Both favorable and unfavorable rumors are positively correlated with stock mispricing levels, and stock price crash risk. Mechanism tests reveal that favorable rumors about industry leaders have industry spillover effects. The effect of rumors on mispricing levels and stock price crash risk are more pronounced when there are more retail investors. Further analysis shows stronger detrimental impacts of rumors on price efficiency for small-cap companies, companies with low information transparency and companies with low institutional ownership.

Earnout provisions (“earnouts” hereafter) provide for contingent payments in M&A agreements and play a role in reducing information asymmetry. However, in China, earnouts are not solely driven by negotiations between acquirers and targets but are also related to regulatory preference. The CSRC amended the M&A regulation in 2014, deregulating mandatory earnouts while retaining the approval system. Leveraging on this context, we explore whether regulators implement implicit regulation by encouraging the usage of voluntary earnouts, and the economic consequences of such action. Our results show that earnouts are more likely to be included in an M&A contract when the deal requires CSRC approval. M&As that involve earnouts are also more likely to obtain regulatory approval and in a shorter time. These findings suggest that regulators may still prefer earnouts even after deregulation. In addition, we find that the association between voluntary earnouts and acquirers’ post-acquisition performance is negative when the M&A deal requires regulatory approval, suggesting that voluntary earnouts influenced by regulatory preference can potentially have a negative impact. Further analyses indicate that this impact can be alleviated by comment letters and market monitoring. Our findings provide regulators with insights into the effects of the regulatory reform in the M&A market.

Audit practice is a team effort led by signing auditors. We examine the impact of the heterogeneity of signing auditors’ audit-firm serving experiences on the disclosure of key audit matters (KAMs). Auditors with more heterogeneous serving experiences demonstrate more adequate KAM disclosure, as evidenced by more KAMs, longer texts and clearer attributions in their disclosures. This effect is influenced by the quality of audit knowledge that auditors accumulate from different serving experiences and the team- and audit-firm-level knowledge integration environment. Furthermore, signing auditors with more diverse service experience tend to improve audit quality, reduce the incidence of restatement or misconduct and enhance the informativeness of financial reports. Our findings enrich the KAM disclosure research and provide insights into audit firms’ human resource allocation and internal management.

This study shows that a decline in investment efficiency due to information asymmetry may not necessarily devalue a firm but may enhance its value instead. Firms base their investment decisions on both public and private information. However, effectively transmitting private information to investors in a competitive market is quite challenging, as it leads to stock prices inadequately reflecting a firm’s true value. Simultaneously, firms must invest to achieve their business objectives, which results in a deviation between a firm’s actual investment level and the market’s expected investment level, thereby reducing investment-q sensitivity. However, this deviation does not imply a waste of societal resources; instead, it improves a firm’s core competitiveness in the product market. We consider the future launch of new products as a proxy for firm private information. We find that (1) private information is negatively associated with investment-q sensitivity, and that the greater the sales of the new product, the lower the investment-q sensitivity; (2) the negative effect is more pronounced for firms with higher revenue volatility and ownership concentration than for those with lower revenue volatility and ownership concentration. This study helps us to further understand how to evaluate firm investment efficiency from the perspective of private information and provides empirical evidence of the costs of the new product launch process.

Against the background of China’s strengthening of finance and accounting supervision, this study examines the practice among listed companies of changing signing auditors at the last minute and explores whether Chinese investors can capture this information in a timely manner. We find that China’s capital market responds significantly negatively to these last-minute changes, implying that investors perceive a potential negative impact of this behavior. Cross-sectional analyses suggest that the characteristics of the change event, recent corporate events, and accounting firm capability significantly affect the stock price response. Furthermore, in terms of the individual characteristics of signing auditors, external investors appear to comprehensively consider busyness level, industry experience, and the timing of the change to determine the causes and effects of the auditor change and make different market reactions accordingly. In addition, consistent with investor perceptions, we find that last-minute changes significantly impair the quality of financial statements, indicating that external investors’ judgments based on information about changes in signing auditors are rational and effective.

Whether registration system reform (RSR) can curb administrative intervention and create a fair market environment has long been a concern in China. We explore this issue from the perspective of the initial public offering (IPO) preference based on the entropy balancing method, and findings are as follows. First, an IPO ownership preference exists under approval system. That is, state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are more likely than private enterprises to obtain IPO approval. However, RSR significantly changes this preference, especially for non-politically connected private enterprises. Second, the post-IPO market performance of SOEs is inferior to that of private enterprises under approval system, thus excluding the view that approval is prioritized for SOEs because of superior performance. Third, compared with SOEs, private enterprises are more likely to switch the issuance system from approval system to registration system; this change makes it easier for them to obtain IPO approval, indicating that private enterprise owners perceive the registration channel to be fairer. Fourth, the effect of RSR on IPO ownership preference mainly occurs in companies in three major urban agglomerations in China—the Pearl River Delta, the Yangtze River Delta, and the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region—and in technology-intensive industries. Collectively, our findings reveal that RSR cultivates a fairer IPO approval process.