China Journal of Accounting Research最新文献

The deep integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into enterprises presents both opportunities and challenges, making it a focal point of current research. This study explores the impact of AI on corporate risk-taking, using data spanning 2010–2019 from A-share listed companies in China. Our findings suggest that AI significantly heightens companies’ level of risk-taking. Furthermore, financing constraints can amplify the relationship between AI and risk-taking, enhancing their sensitivity correlation. AI also significantly improves firms’ investment efficiency and mitigates their underinvestment issues. Finally, mediation tests indicate that AI enhances risk-taking by diminishing firms’ risk perception. Overall, we offer valuable insights into and references for accelerating the deep integration of AI into enterprises.

In this study, we examine the peer effect on climate risk information disclosure by analyzing A-share listed companies in China. We find that industry peers influence target firms’ climate risk information disclosure through active (passive) imitation resulting from cost–benefit considerations (institutional pressures). Leader companies are more likely to be emulated by within-industry follower companies and target firms prefer to learn from similar within-industry firms. Executive overconfidence and performance pressure negatively affect target firms’ willingness to emulate their peers. Finally, the peer effect of climate risk information disclosure demonstrates a regional aspect. Our findings have implications for reasonable climate risk information disclosure at the micro level and effective regulation to move toward achieving carbon peak/neutrality at the macro level.

In this study, we take a machine learning-based approach to measure institutional investor attention to corporate social responsibility (CSR) issues when communicating with firms during site visits. We find that institutional investors can effectively enhance CSR performance through CSR-related communication. This effect remains robust to various checks and is more pronounced for non-state-owned enterprises and firms with lower levels of institutional ownership and in periods following the issuance of Green Investment Guidelines. We also identify information asymmetry and financing constraints as the two mechanisms underlying this effect. Overall, our findings highlight the importance of private interactions between management and institutional investors in promoting CSR.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

This study investigates the valuation and real effects of the mandatory disclosure of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission costs from the perspective of “double materiality.” We consider a firm with a Cobb-Douglas production function that combines GHG-related and non-GHG-related investments to produce short-term and long-term returns. In particular, the GHG-related investment entails short-term and long-term social costs of GHG emissions, including corporate costs and negative externalities. We demonstrate how the mandatory disclosure of the long-term costs of GHG emissions affects capital market valuations and corporate investment decisions relative to a non-disclosure regime. The social welfare in an accounting regime hinges on three parameters: the persistence of the short-term investment return, the ratio of the productivity of GHG-related investment to that of non-GHG-related investment, and the social cost parameter for GHG emissions. Our findings suggest that disclosing the long-term costs of GHG emissions may be detrimental to social welfare. Specifically, the non-disclosure regime results in higher social welfare than the disclosure regime for high values of these parameters.