Pub Date : 2024-12-24DOI: 10.1016/j.jcae.2024.100453
Silver Chung , Daniel Sejun Hwang
This study investigates the impact of directors’ experiences with accounting enforcement on financial reporting quality (FRQ). While firms often regard real-life experiences as a crucial factor in their hiring decisions, the actual impact of directors’ experiences on corporate decisions, particularly financial reporting decisions remains unclear. Using a difference-in-differences method, we find significant changes in a firm’s FRQ when its director experiences SEC enforcement at another firm where she serves as a director. More specifically, we find that discretionary accruals and restatement likelihood decrease while real activities manipulation increases following a director’s Accounting and Auditing Enforcement Releases (AAER) experience. Additionally, such changes are concentrated among subsamples where AAERs allege fraud or GAAP violations, or the director serves on the audit committee at the perpetrating company. Collectively, these findings show that directors’ experiences make differences in related corporate decision-making and SEC enforcement actions have disciplinary effects beyond the firms that directly face charges.
{"title":"Seeing is believing: Director accounting enforcement experience and financial reporting quality","authors":"Silver Chung , Daniel Sejun Hwang","doi":"10.1016/j.jcae.2024.100453","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jcae.2024.100453","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study investigates the impact of directors’ experiences with accounting enforcement on financial reporting quality (FRQ). While firms often regard real-life experiences as a crucial factor in their hiring decisions, the actual impact of directors’ experiences on corporate decisions, particularly financial reporting decisions remains unclear. Using a difference-in-differences method, we find significant changes in a firm’s FRQ when its director experiences SEC enforcement at another firm where she serves as a director. More specifically, we find that discretionary accruals and restatement likelihood decrease while real activities manipulation increases following a director’s Accounting and Auditing Enforcement Releases (AAER) experience. Additionally, such changes are concentrated among subsamples where AAERs allege fraud or GAAP violations, or the director serves on the audit committee at the perpetrating company. Collectively, these findings show that directors’ experiences make differences in related corporate decision-making and SEC enforcement actions have disciplinary effects beyond the firms that directly face charges.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":46693,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Accounting & Economics","volume":"21 1","pages":"Article 100453"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2024-12-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143160674","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-12-20DOI: 10.1016/j.jcae.2024.100452
Pengcheng Zhang , Jiayin Qi
This study empirically investigates the impact of carbon emissions trading on corporate financing constraints using a difference-in-differences model. By compiling lists of emission-controlled enterprises from each pilot carbon market, this study demonstrates that carbon emissions trading significantly increases financing constraints for these enterprises. However, no significant regional or sectoral spillover effects are observed. The results of the mechanism testing show that carbon emissions trading diminishes enterprise performance in the stock market and exerts adverse effects on the scale of corporate bank borrowing and the debt maturity structure. Further research reveals that good corporate governance and better information quality can inhibit the adverse effects of carbon emissions trading. This mechanism reduces firms’ investment expenditures, but increases their investments in research and development and financial asset allocation. Notably, despite financing constraints being detrimental to innovation, carbon emissions trading significantly enhances both the level and quality of innovation in firms. These findings underscore the complex effects of carbon emissions trading on corporate financing constraints and highlight the intricate nature of environmental policies at the microeconomic level.
{"title":"Carbon emission regulation and corporate financing constraints: A quasi-natural experiment based on China’s carbon emissions trading mechanism","authors":"Pengcheng Zhang , Jiayin Qi","doi":"10.1016/j.jcae.2024.100452","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jcae.2024.100452","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study empirically investigates the impact of carbon emissions trading on corporate financing constraints using a difference-in-differences model. By compiling lists of emission-controlled enterprises from each pilot carbon market, this study demonstrates that carbon emissions trading significantly increases financing constraints for these enterprises. However, no significant regional or sectoral spillover effects are observed. The results of the mechanism testing show that carbon emissions trading diminishes enterprise performance in the stock market and exerts adverse effects on the scale of corporate bank borrowing and the debt maturity structure. Further research reveals that good corporate governance and better information quality can inhibit the adverse effects of carbon emissions trading. This mechanism reduces firms’ investment expenditures, but increases their investments in research and development and financial asset allocation. Notably, despite financing constraints being detrimental to innovation, carbon emissions trading significantly enhances both the level and quality of innovation in firms. These findings underscore the complex effects of carbon emissions trading on corporate financing constraints and highlight the intricate nature of environmental policies at the microeconomic level.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":46693,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Accounting & Economics","volume":"21 1","pages":"Article 100452"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2024-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143160697","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-12-19DOI: 10.1016/j.jcae.2024.100451
Yaqian Wu , Jiyuan Li
We investigate the impact of air pollution on audit process and audit outcomes using unique data from the Chinese capital market between 2013 and 2020. We find that auditors exert less effort in client firms located in cities with severe air pollution, leading to lower audit quality represented by a lower probability of and fewer audit adjustments. The cross-sectional analysis shows that auditors from Big 4 audit firms can mitigate the effect of air pollution on audit effort and audit quality. We also draw some interesting conclusions about the effect of auditors’ perceptions of air pollution variation in both spatial and time dimensions, and the impact of COVID-19. Our findings still hold in several robustness checks such as using alternative proxies, controlling for more fixed effects, considering mutual selection issues, employing regression discontinuity design, utilizing instrument variables method, and conducting placebo tests. Our study contributes to the emerging literature on behavioral finance by extending the research into ambient air pollution to the auditing context, provides new insights into the determinants of audit effort and audit quality, and has some implications for regulators.
{"title":"Does air pollution matter for audit process and audit outcomes? Evidence from China","authors":"Yaqian Wu , Jiyuan Li","doi":"10.1016/j.jcae.2024.100451","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jcae.2024.100451","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We investigate the impact of air pollution on audit process and audit outcomes using unique data from the Chinese capital market between 2013 and 2020. We find that auditors exert less effort in client firms located in cities with severe air pollution, leading to lower audit quality represented by a lower probability of and fewer audit adjustments. The cross-sectional analysis shows that auditors from Big 4 audit firms can mitigate the effect of air pollution on audit effort and audit quality. We also draw some interesting conclusions about the effect of auditors’ perceptions of air pollution variation in both spatial and time dimensions, and the impact of COVID-19. Our findings still hold in several robustness checks such as using alternative proxies, controlling for more fixed effects, considering mutual selection issues, employing regression discontinuity design, utilizing instrument variables method, and conducting placebo tests. Our study contributes to the emerging literature on behavioral finance by extending the research into ambient air pollution to the auditing context, provides new insights into the determinants of audit effort and audit quality, and has some implications for regulators.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":46693,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Accounting & Economics","volume":"21 1","pages":"Article 100451"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2024-12-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143160676","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-11-26DOI: 10.1016/j.jcae.2024.100450
Jing Zhou , Lili Jiu , Oupin Tang , Po-Hsiang Yu
This study examines the effect of corporate targeted poverty alleviation (TPA) activities endorsed by Chinese governments on audit outcomes. We find that firms engaging in TPA activities are less likely to receive modified audit opinions (MAOs) relative to those without TPA activities and more TPA investments induce less MAO issuance, documenting an unintentional beneficial consequence of TPA. These findings are robust to a battery of sensitivity tests, including addressing endogeneity issues and ruling out the alternative explanation. Our cross-sectional results show that the negative relation between TPA and MAOs is more significant for firms audited by non-industry specialists and short-tenure auditors, non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs), and labor-intensive firms. We perform the mediation analyses and identify three potential channels- improved operating performance, enhanced information disclosure quality, and elevated reputation- through which TPA engagements influence the likelihood of receiving MAOs. Moreover, we find industrial development TPA has a more pronounced effect on audit outcomes due to its positive impact on firms’ business operations. Overall, our research documents an unintended consequence of firms’ TPA initiatives in mitigating audit risk. As a vital facet of policy-oriented CSR, TPA engagements exhibit unique characteristics compared to other CSR perspectives. Given its economic relevance and political features, our study contributes to this stream of research and offers implications for TPA initiatives.
{"title":"The unintended consequences of targeted poverty alleviation: Evidence from China","authors":"Jing Zhou , Lili Jiu , Oupin Tang , Po-Hsiang Yu","doi":"10.1016/j.jcae.2024.100450","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jcae.2024.100450","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study examines the effect of corporate targeted poverty alleviation (TPA) activities endorsed by Chinese governments on audit outcomes. We find that firms engaging in TPA activities are less likely to receive modified audit opinions (MAOs) relative to those without TPA activities and more TPA investments induce less MAO issuance, documenting an unintentional beneficial consequence of TPA. These findings are robust to a battery of sensitivity tests, including addressing endogeneity issues and ruling out the alternative explanation. Our cross-sectional results show that the negative relation between TPA and MAOs is more significant for firms audited by non-industry specialists and short-tenure auditors, non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs), and labor-intensive firms. We perform the mediation analyses and identify three potential channels- improved operating performance, enhanced information disclosure quality, and elevated reputation- through which TPA engagements influence the likelihood of receiving MAOs. Moreover, we find industrial development TPA has a more pronounced effect on audit outcomes due to its positive impact on firms’ business operations. Overall, our research documents an unintended consequence of firms’ TPA initiatives in mitigating audit risk. As a vital facet of policy-oriented CSR, TPA engagements exhibit unique characteristics compared to other CSR perspectives. Given its economic relevance and political features, our study contributes to this stream of research and offers implications for TPA initiatives.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":46693,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Accounting & Economics","volume":"21 1","pages":"Article 100450"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2024-11-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143160679","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}