Journal of International Accounting Auditing and Taxation最新文献

This study investigates the initial impact of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) 15 by comparing the financial statement comparability of the effective years of its implementation with those of the pre-IFRS 15 periods. Given that private firms are exempt from the IFRS 15 amendment, we use them as the control group for public firms. Specifically, we use Korean firms from 2015 to 2020 and employ a difference-in-differences approach. This study finds an increase in financial statement comparability for public firms after the IFRS 15 application relative to the change of private firms that are not subject to the IFRS 15. We interpret that the enhancement in financial statement comparability is caused by the following two aspects of IFRS 15: discretion reduction effect and harmonization of multiple standards effect. Furthermore, an increase in comparability is greater for firms that are clients of industry-specialist auditors and those that operate in less-competitive industries, unlike their counterparts. We also find that discretionary revenues are lower in the post-IFRS 15 period than in the pre-IFRS 15 period. Overall, the results of this study suggest that IFRS 15 can deliver the outcomes aimed for by regulators, at least during its initial implementation.

This study examines whether and how a country’s implementation of corporate governance reforms affects the propensity and properties of management earnings forecasts. We propose competing hypotheses that the implementation of corporate governance reforms will either increase or reduce the likelihood of management earnings forecasts. Our sample includes public firms from 22 countries spanning from 2004 to 2009. Using a difference-in-differences (DID) research design and logistic regressions, we compare the change in earnings forecast practices between firms domiciled in countries that implemented corporate governance reforms and firms domiciled in countries that did not. We find that the implementation of corporate governance reforms in a country increases the propensity of firms in that country to issue earnings forecasts. However, the implementation of corporate governance reforms in a country does not significantly influence the quality of earnings forecasts issued in the post-reform period. Also, the effect of reforms on the level of earnings forecasts issued by firms is greater for countries adopting the comply-or-explain type of reform, for firms in countries with a weaker level of pre-reform corporate governance, and for countries with a common law legal origin. Overall, our findings shed light on how strengthened corporate governance affects firms’ voluntary disclosure practices.

This study examines whether corporate tax information from non-financial disclosure is material for investors. This is important because, recently, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) enacted, and the European Union (EU) passed, new non-financial tax disclosure requirements. By conducting a factorial survey experiment, we are the first to show that non-professional investors are more likely to invest in companies providing detailed public country-by-country-reporting (CbCR) than in those that do not. We conclude that a public CbCR – as required by the GRI and the EU – is material for (non-professional) investors. Additional analyses show that the effect of the public CbCR is stronger (i) for socially responsible investors and (ii) for investors with high tax morale. In contrast to providing public CbCR, we find no evidence that reporting the corporate tax strategy (CTS) – as solely required by the GRI – affects investment decisions. Our findings provide novel insights into whether and how different types of investors integrate different kinds of non-financial tax disclosure in their decision-making processes. For this reason, our study at the intersection of corporate taxation, reporting, and sustainability provides implications for scholars, corporate decision-makers, policy-makers, and standard setters.

Timeliness is an essential factor for the relevance of financial reporting information. However, the role of corporate governance in influencing financial reporting is largely unknown. This study is the first to investigate whether board composition influences the timeliness of financial reporting in private firms. Using a sample of 8,095 Swedish companies, I find that more independent, gender diverse, and larger boards tend to file their accounts in a timely fashion. These findings suggest that board composition considerably influences reporting behavior in private companies.

In recent years, accounting scholars have shown growing interest in utilizing social media (SM) for research. Using a structured literature review of 86 articles, this study aims to reconcile insights from diverse literature to understand the current trends in SM accounting research and propose an agenda for future studies. Our findings reveal that SM accounting research is still at an early stage despite the increase of articles in recent years. In particular, we find that most studies focus on (publicly listed) corporate use of SM (mostly Twitter and Facebook) to disseminate financial and non-financial information in the North American and European regions. However, there is still a limited understanding of how SM interactions among various parties may push for greater transparency in different forms of organizations and in countries where stakeholder interests are less protected. While SM studies use system-oriented (such as institutional, legitimacy, and stakeholder theories) and economic-based theories, most studies only use SM as an empirical platform and rely on empirically developed arguments without reference to explicit theories. Finally, we identify common research themes and suggest promising avenues for future accounting research.

After an investigation of an audit engagement is announced, does media coverage of the investigation affect the involved individual auditor’s behaviors in his or her other non-investigated engagements? We examine this question using a sample of Chinese firms. We find that an individual auditor is more likely to issue modified audit opinions in non-investigated engagements if the investigation attracts a high level of media coverage. This augmenting effect of media coverage exists only when the non-investigated firm has an opaque information environment or a relatively high level of earnings management, when the individual auditor is the review auditor or a non-busy auditor, and when the news comes from an opinion leader. Our results suggest that the media can play an effective role in broadening the sphere of influence of regulatory actions.

This article systematically reviews 94 accounting and finance studies that address the real effects of financial reporting. Whereas the effects of financial reporting on capital suppliers’ decisions traditionally have received much attention, recent research has generated important new insights into the feedback effects of financial reporting on the reporting firms’ real activities (e.g., investments or allocation and use of resources). We identify the consequences of financial reporting for (1) the reporting firm, (2) its peer firms, and (3) the input and output markets. We also highlight the effects of firms’ internal controls over financial reporting and consider how accounting and auditing regulations influence and contribute to real effects. The studies we review are consistent in their findings that high-quality financial reporting is positively associated with the efficiency of the reporting firm’s resource allocation. Many studies also suggest a positive association between high-quality financial reporting and an efficient allocation of resources in the real sector, which can also benefit other market participants like consumers or employees. The article concludes with an outlook on fruitful research opportunities.

In 2013, the United Kingdom (UK) Financial Reporting Council (FRC) mandated independent auditors to provide an expanded audit report to disclose the risks of material misstatement and application of materiality. This paper examines the information content and economic consequences of the expanded auditor’s report and offers three main results. We first investigate the usefulness of auditor reporting regime change and find evidence that the new reporting regime has some influence on market indicators. Second, we document that firms receiving an expanded audit report with a higher level of disclosure on risks of material misstatement (materiality) exhibit significantly higher (lower) idiosyncratic risk, beta, and cost of equity. That is, the expanded auditor’s disclosure meaningfully affects firms’ risk fundamentals. Third, we find that information conveyed by the expanded auditor’s report impacts bid-ask spread, trading volume, volatility of market returns, and analyst forecast dispersion. Collectively, our analyses suggest that auditors provide information that meaningfully reflects the risks that the audited companies face. Furthermore, this information is associated with significant economic consequences for capital market participants, implying that it is not generic. This firm-specific and useful disclosure supports the FRC (followed by International Auditing and Assurance Standard Board (IAASB) and Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB)) decision mandating the expanded audit report and provides evidence-based insights to major recent structural reforms aiming at proposing remedies to audit and capital market problems in the UK, and beyond.

This paper investigates the relationship between segmental reporting and analyst forecast dispersion in the largest European Union firms. It also addresses how the adoption of International Financial Reporting Standard 8 (IFRS8) and the strength of country-level enforcement affect this relationship. I find a positive relationship between segmental reporting and analyst forecast dispersion. However, the results of sub-sample analyses reveal a negative relationship between segmental reporting and analyst forecast dispersion in countries with strong enforcement systems. Furthermore, this paper documents that the positive relationship between segmental reporting and analyst forecast dispersion is pronounced only in the Pre-IFRS8 period. These findings suggest that country-level enforcement compensates for lower segmental reporting quality, and the adoption of IFRS8 improves the quality of segmental reporting.

Prior studies on developed markets have documented that conditional conservatism is positively associated with investment efficiency. In this study, we investigate whether this association can be shaped by the unique institutional environment—state ownership of firms and banks—in China. First, we examine the association between conditional conservatism and investment efficiency in China’s corporate setting and find that conditional conservatism can reduce (facilitate) investment in listed firm settings in which overinvestment (underinvestment) is most likely, and thereby improve investment efficiency. Further analyses reveal that the effects of conditional conservatism on improving investment efficiency are less pronounced in state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and firms with higher percentages of loans borrowed from state-owned commercial banks. Moreover, we find that these effects are more pronounced in non-SOEs than in SOEs after the implementation of the 2008 stimulus program, which resulted in a large increase in bank borrowing by Chinese firms. Overall, this study provides new evidence on how the effects of conditional conservatism on investment efficiency can be shaped by concentrated state ownership and politically driven lending in China.