Journal of International Financial Management & Accounting最新文献

This study draws upon media agenda-setting theory to investigate the relationship between negative media coverage around environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues and the quality of integrated reporting (IR). In particular, we examine the top 100 South African listed companies in the 2013–2018 timeframe for 317 firm-year observations. Our results reveal that IR quality is positively related to negative ESG media coverage. Thus, a company exposed to more media pressure issues higher-quality IR consistent with its need to face scrutiny and potential reputational damage and to restore or maintain its legitimacy. Results are robust to different measures of negative ESG media coverage, controlling for ESG disclosures, and are confirmed by analyses aimed at addressing endogeneity (instrumental variable approach, firm-fixed effects, and matched samples). Subsample analyses show that financial sector reputational concerns do not impact our results. Additional tests show no long-term effects of negative media coverage on IR quality and that sustainability embeddedness alleviates a company's response to negative ESG news in terms of enhanced reporting.

Using a unique data set of Italian banks covering the 2011 to 2019 period, this study investigates the influence of human resource training on bank stability and examines whether this relationship is affected by bank efficiency and credit risk. In line with the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm, our findings suggest that employee training exerts a positive impact on bank stability. Credit risk and bank efficiency are also identified as potential drivers in this relationship. Importantly, our results remain robust when addressing endogeneity issues and considering alternative model specifications. This study offers novel insights into the impact of employee-related variables on bank performance. The practical implications of our findings hold relevance for both banks and regulatory authorities, as human resource training can profoundly influence the effectiveness of risk management strategies and, ultimately, the sound and prudent management of banks.

We examine the effects of environmental regulations on the profitability and value of Korean listed firms, exploiting the first phase of the Korean Emissions Trading System (ETS) as an exogenous shock. While previous studies have mainly focused on environmental regulations in developed countries, often yielding inconclusive results, emerging markets like South Korea remain less explored. Using data on Korean listed firms from 2011 to 2017, we explore the effects of the 2015 Korean ETS on environmental and financial performance in treated firms. We find that treated firms did not reduce their carbon emissions, but their environmental ratings improved. Moreover, the ETS slightly increased profitability but significantly decreased firm value. Treated firms also exhibited a higher systematic risk, indicating that investors account for future carbon risks. In summary, the Korean ETS has not effectively incentivized firms to reduce emissions and has diminished their long-term value.

This study investigates the impact of managerial foreign experience on corporate employee protection. Using 30,644 firm-year observations from 3972 Chinese listed firms from 2008 to 2020, I find that compared with firms without returnee directors, firms with returnee directors pay more social insurance premiums and implement better employee treatment policies. The positive relationship is stronger when returnee directors acquire foreign work experience (as opposed to educational experience), gain experience in countries with strong labor protection, serve as a CEO or a chairperson in the Chinese firm, and have high media visibility. The cross-sectional analysis shows the effect of directors with foreign experience on employee protection is greater in non-state-owned firms, and returnee directors improve employee protections more when the employees have relatively weak discourse power. Additional analysis finds that returnee directors improve employee training and occupational safety, and they help balance social insurance generosity and employment levels. The results are robust after addressing the potential endogeneity problems. My results suggest a potential way to transfer better labor protection practices from developed to emerging markets.

Literature on investor sentiment has predominantly been conducted at the market level. Recent studies employing firm-level sentiment have increasingly turned to textual analysis; however, the suitability of this type of proxy is still unverified. We utilize the Chinese stock market data from 2015 to 2023, aiming to discern whether the jump component of realized volatility possesses characteristics of investor sentiment. Our analysis reveals a pronounced short-term persistence in jump volatility, particularly, among stocks that are hard to value and those with minimal institutional ownership. Further, we find that stocks exhibiting high monthly jump volatility consistently exhibit underperformance over extended periods, corroborating the hypothesis of sentiment-induced temporary mispricing phenomena. Significantly, our findings advocate for the adoption of the jump component of realized volatility as a proxy for firm-specific investor sentiment, offering a novel perspective in the sentiment analysis literature.

The Great Chinese Famine is considered one of the most traumatic events recorded in human history and has a long-lasting influence on the survivors' behaviors. Previous studies have linked the CEOs' early-life experiences to corporate decisions and managerial behaviors, but does experience affect corporate governance? We investigate the impact of the CEO's early-life famine experience on tunneling using a data set consisting of 11,573 firm-year observations from the Chinese manufacturing companies publishing A-shares on the main board from 2006 to 2016. We find that companies run by CEOs who experienced the Great Chinese Famine (1959–1961) in their early life are less likely to collude with controlling shareholders to expropriate minority shareholders than those who did not suffer the hardships of famine. We further make mediation tests to confirm two channels: risk aversion and empathy for poverty. The overall findings align with the view of imprinting theory: CEOs' experiences of adverse events in their early life have a lasting impact on their later-life behaviors.

This study examines the impact of Chinese stock market liberalization on the quality of firms' information disclosures. Although previous studies have explored the economic outcomes of stock market liberalization, little is known about its impact on the quality of management earnings forecasts. We treat China's Stock Connect program as a quasi-experiment and draw data from Chinese A-share-listed companies from 2012 to 2017. Using a staggered difference-in-difference model, we find that eligible firms issue more accurate earnings forecasts after implementation of the Connect program compared with ineligible firms. Our mechanism analyses show that the positive effect is more pronounced for firms with initially opaque information environment and higher ex ante agency costs, suggesting that market liberalization facilitates higher-opaque firms to issue more accurate earnings forecasts to meet the information demand from foreign investors, and facilitates monitoring in firms with weak internal governance, thereby improving earnings forecasts quality.

The above article, published online on 30 January 2024 in Wiley Online Library (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jifm.12198) has been retracted by agreement between the journal's Editors in Chief, Sabri Boubaker and Xiaoqian Zhu, and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

The retraction has been agreed due to an editorial office error that led to the publication of the article without peer review.

This study examines the impact of blockholder exit threats on excess cash holdings following China's split-share structural reform. Previous studies have confirmed the governance role of blockholder exit threats, but their effectiveness is limited to companies with greater private benefits. Using a sample of 2340 firm-year observations of Chinese listed firms between 2002 and 2009, we find that the exit threat of blockholders increases the level of excess cash holdings. These results suggest that blockholders view exit threats as a means of collaborating with controlling shareholders to boost excess cash holdings and diversify corporate resources for private benefits. The collusion effect is more pronounced in firms with poorer investor protections, lower shareholding concentrations, and more severe agency conflicts. Additionally, in terms of economic consequences, blockholder exit threats decrease buy-and-hold abnormal returns and increase the occurrence of corporate scandals. Overall, this study provides empirical evidence of collusion among large shareholders, which harms small shareholders' interests from the perspective of excess cash holdings.