Journal of Contemporary Accounting & Economics最新文献

This study investigates the effect of intrastate cultural tightness-looseness (CTL) on accounting conservatism, using firms located in 50 states of the United States, from 1988 to 2016. It finds that firms located in culturally tight states prefer to take a cautious approach to reduce uncertainty of future economic events by increasing accounting conservatism compared to those located in culturally loose states. Moreover, we find that the positive effect of cultural tightness on accounting conservatism is more pronounced as product market competition increases. Taken together, our findings provide evidence that intrastate CTL has differential impacts on accounting conservatism in the same national culture, and product competition strategically reinforces the positive effect of CTL on accounting conservatism.

Using a sample of Chinese listed firms that are required to audit and disclose any internal control deficiency (ICD), this paper examines the effect of mandatory ICD disclosure on accrual quality (AQ) in China. We find that relative to voluntary ICD disclosure, mandatory ICD disclosure is associated with poorer AQ, as proxied by abnormal accruals, suggesting that the mandated disclosure of ICD effectively identifies financial reporting quality in Chinese firms. This relationship is enhanced by government control of firms (especially the central government) and by the intensity of government inspections and is stronger in undeveloped regional markets. The results are robust to the application of the PSM-DID method and use of different measures and samples. Our findings demonstrate the critical role of the mandated disclosure of ICD and improve our understanding of internal control mechanisms in emerging markets.

We examine whether and how managerial ability affects corporate debt maturity decisions. The demand for shorter maturity debt is expected to be higher in firms operated by high-ability managers, who possess the superior skills needed to anticipate firms’ economic prospects and communicate their private information, thereby alleviating information asymmetry and bolstering their reputation. We document that firms with high ability managers are associated with more short-term debt financing. The effect becomes stronger for firms facing severe information asymmetry problems, unconstrained firms or high quality firms. Supportive evidence is found from the analysis of short- and long-term debt issuance activity. Our findings remain robust to alternative measures of managerial ability and debt maturity choice, and are not driven by omitted variable bias, endogeneity concerns or industry group. Overall, we provide robust evidence that supports the signalling theory for debt maturity structure and contributes to the literatures on managerial ability.

We examine the association between corporate tax avoidance and empire building using 35,060 firm-year observations from the United States (US) for the period 1991–2015. We build a composite empire building measure by conducting a factor analysis on four popular empire building proxies used in the literature. We find a positive association between this composite measure and the four proxies used to represent the tax avoidance of firms in our sample. As our results suggest, agency problems are inflicted upon firms employing tax avoidance strategies which, in turn, facilitate managerial rent extraction through aggressiveness in growth and the accumulation of assets. Furthermore, the relationship of corporate tax avoidance to managerial empire building is found to be more pronounced in firms with weak governance, poor monitoring mechanisms, greater Chief Executive Officer (CEO) power and weak corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance. We also find that empire building-motivated tax avoidance leads to lower firm valuation. Our results remain insensitive even when employing several robustness tests.

This study explores determinants of voluntary administration (VA) and deed of company arrangement (DOCA) durations using unconditional quantile regression (UQR). Determinants’ effects are heterogeneous across the VA and DOCA distributions. Determinants related to complexity and negotiation, including size and debt restructuring existence, are positively and negatively related respectively to VA duration, and are stronger at longer durations. Insolvency firm expertise is negatively related to VA duration at shorter durations. Determinants related to scale and procedure, including size and accounting problems, are positively related to DOCA duration, and are stronger at longer durations. No determinants explain short DOCA durations. The UQR results uncovered other new empirical regularities.