Financial analysts' forecasts of earnings: A better surrogate for market expectations

The specification of the market expectation of accounting numbers is a common feature of many empirical studies in accounting and finance. Givoly and Lakonishok (1979) found that financial analysts' forecasts have information content. This study evaluates the quality of analysts' forecasts as surrogates for the market expectation of earnings and compares it with that of prediction models commonly used in research. Results indicate that prediction errors of analysts are more closely associated with security price movements, suggesting that analysts' forecasts provide a better surrogate for market expectations than forecasts generated by time-series models. The study also identifies factors that might contribute to the performance of the financial analysts'forecasts. The broadness of the information set employed by analysts and, to a lesser extent, their reliance on information released after the end of the fiscal year appear to be important contributors to their performance.     

The impact of constructive operating lease capitalisation on key accounting ratios

Current UK lease accounting regulation does not require operating leases to be capitalised in the accounts of lessees, although this is likely to change with the publication of FRS 5. This study conducts a prospective analysis of the effects of such a change. The potential magnitude of the impact of lease capitalisation upon individual users' decisions, market valuations, company cash flows, and managers' behaviour can be indicated by the effect on key accounting ratios, which are employed in decision-making and in financial contracts. The capitalised value of operating leases is estimated using a method similar to that suggested by Imhoff, Lipe and Wright (1991), adapted for the UK accounting and tax environment, and developed to incorporate company-specific assumptions. Results for 1994 for a random sample of 300 listed UK companies show that, on average, the unrecorded long-term liability represented 39% of reported long-term debt, while the unrecorded asset represented 6% of total assets. Capitalisation had a significant impact (at the 1% level) on six of the nine selected ratios (profit margin, return on assets, asset turnover, and three measures of gearing). Moreover, the Spearman rank correlation between each ratio before and after capitalisation revealed that the ranking of companies changed markedly for gearing measures in particular. There were significant inter-industry variations, with the services sector experiencing the greatest impact. An analysis of the impact of capitalisation over the five-year period from 1990 to 1994 showed that capitalisation had the greatest impact during the trough of the recession. Results were shown to be robust with respect to key assumptions of the capitalisation method. These findings contribute to the assessment of the economic consequences of a policy change requiring operating lease capitalisation. Significant changes in the magnitude of key accounting ratios and a major shift in company performance rankings suggest that interested parties' decisions and company cash flows are likely to be affected.     

Municipal bond market recognition of pension reporting practices

The purpose of this study was to examine the usefulness of current municipal pension accounting disclosures for assessing municipal bond risks and returns. An empirical assessment of the association between various pension ratios and bond ratings, bond yields, and market risk revealed little explanatory power in the pension variables. We posit that the results probably stem from current practices that reduce the relevance and reliability of pension accounting numbers. Thus, standardization of practices and increased disclosures as proposed by the NCGA may have positive effects on the usefulness of pension disclosures for creditor decisions.     

Real effects of governmental accounting standards: Evidence from GASB statement No. 53 – Accounting and financial reporting for derivative instruments

GASB Statement No. 53, Accounting and Financial Reporting for Derivative Instruments, (GASB 53) significantly altered U.S. governmental sector accounting of derivative instruments by mandating the recognition of hitherto off-balance sheet derivative instruments in the government-wide statement of net assets and requiring that ineffective hedges be clearly identified. These requirements have an unfavorable financial statement impact for municipalities with net negative fair value derivative positions and municipalities holding ineffective hedges. Using a hand-collected, comprehensive dataset of municipal derivatives, we examine whether the level of U.S. municipal derivative holdings changed following the adoption of GASB 53. Consistent with GASB 53 affecting municipal officials’ derivative decisions, we find a significant post-GASB 53 reduction in derivative holdings for municipalities with net negative fair value derivative positions and ineffective hedges. Our findings suggest that governmental accounting regulations could affect real decisions of municipal officials and therefore could potentially have public policy implications beyond the provision of information to stakeholders.     

Tax impact in corporate social responsibility decisions and reporting

Tax effects of corporate social responsibility decisions should be incorporated into the various approaches for performing social audits or accounting for social performance. This paper identifies some special U.S. tax provisions which encourage corporate participations in social responsibilities. The Linowes' socio-economic accounting model is revised to show tax costs.     

Organizational controls and discretionary program decision making: A field study

This paper reports the results of a field study aimed at exploring how one important class of decisions— discretionary program decisions—are controlled in decentralized films. Data were collected from profit centre managers using unstructured interviews and a questionnaire survey. The data show that decisions are affected by many devices that can be called controls, including net income targets, expense targets, headcount constraints, requirements for approvals, and directives given by higher management. They also show that the effects of the controls can vary with certain characteristics of the profit centers' situation (e.g. strategy, recent performance), the management style of the company chairman, and the accounting treatment for the expenditure (i.e. whether capitalized or expensed).     

The importance of state accounting practices for creditor decisions

This paper examines the association between state government accounting practices and creditor decisions. Creditor decisions were surrogated by yield premiums and variances of the premiums on general obligation debt securities. Accounting practices were summarized from the Council of State Governments Survey. In addition to these practices, accounting ratios and bond ratings were included as independent variables in regression models. The results demonstrated that accounting practices were not directly associated with the bond risk and return measures but may have been indirectly related as a result of their effect on bond ratings.     

Succeeding in managerial accounting. Part 2: a structural equations analysis

Does the type of knowledge, and levels of ability and experience needed, depend on rank in managerial accounting? Are the knowledge, ability, and experience needed for managerial accounting success, consistent with the Libby & Luft (L&L) model (1993) of the determinants of judgment performance in accounting? We explore these questions using structural equation models of the performance evaluations of 2941 practicing managerial accountants. Results indicate that technical managerial accounting knowledge, ability, and experience predict job performance success for junior managerial accountants; industry knowledge, tacit managerial knowledge (TMK) and experience predict success for seniors; and, industry and TMK predict success for managers. The results suggest significant (though not identical) commonality in the predictors of success in managerial accounting and the determinants of judgment performance identified in the L& L model.     

Is better banking performance associated with financial inclusion and mandated CSR expenditure in a developing country?

Motivated by legislation mandating CSR expenditure to improve social equality and economic development in India, we examine the association of CSR expenditure and financial inclusion with the performance of banking firms in the period after introduction of the legislation. We study whether mandated CSR expenditure and/or financial inclusion measures are associated with better financial performance, using both accounting and stock market measures of performance, for Indian banks during 2015–2017. Our results demonstrate that level of CSR expenditure and degree of financial inclusion is not associated with banks’ financial performance when performance is measured in accounting terms. However, a significant negative association is found when performance is measured by stock market return. These results suggest that the current design of the legislation is unlikely to achieve its purpose. This is the first study to present clear evidence on the associations of mandatory CSR spending and firm‐level financial inclusion with accounting‐based and market‐based bank performance.     

Strategic behavior and regulation research in accounting

This paper focuses on models of political behavior that implicitly or explicitly form the foundation for empirical economic consequences studies in accounting. The studies that have appeared adopt a single-period of single-agendum-item perspective. This paper discusses differences in rational political behavior that arise naturally in single-period versus multiperiod settings. The behavioral implications of varying configurations of available information on agents' “ preferences” are also considered. Because of the tremendously complex empirical domain being studied, examples are relied on heavily to motivate the discussion rather than engaging in a formal modeling exercise.     

Operating and synthetic leases: Exploiting financial benefits in the post-Enron era

Applying constructive lease capitalization to operating leases of firms in the 2003 S&P 500 index, we demonstrate that currently companies can hide billions of liabilities, enhance retained earnings, income, and ratios by reporting leases as operating. With the rekindled interests of the International Accounting Standards Board and Financial Accounting Standards Board on lease reporting, our study provides valuable and timely information for their decisions.Results indicate that by reporting operating leases, firms avoided on average $582 million of liabilities (11% of total liabilities) and $450 million of assets (4% of total assets) for our 366 sample firms. Partitioning sample into negative and positive income impact subgroups provides additional insight into firm's motivation for using operating leases. Under lease capitalization the top quartile positive subgroup experienced an 18% increase in income while the top quartile negative subgroup had an 11% decline in income. There was also a significant negative impact on liquidity, leverage and performance ratios.     

Economic consequences of accounting standards: The lease disclosure rule change

We examine capital structure changes to investigate the impact of SFAS No. 13 on lessees. While this accounting standard essentially rearranged capital lease disclosures (from footnotes to the balance sheet), mandated capitalization substantially altered key accounting ratios. Our results document a systematic substitution from capital leases to operating leases and nonleases sources of financing. In addition, lessees appear to reduce book leverage by increasing equity and reducing conventional debt. The magnitudes of these responses are cross-sectionally related to preadoption levels of footnoted capital leases.     

Accounting in organized anarchies: Understanding and designing accounting systems in ambiguous situations

This paper explores the relationship between organizations in ambiguous situations, the technology of choice and the uses of internal accounting systems (systems of cost accumulation, performance evaluation and budgetary control). Accounting systems are examined in terms of the two elements of March's technology of foolishness (Civilokonomen, May 1971, pp. 7–12). Relaxation of traditional prohibitions in choice behaviour against imitation, coercion and rationalization suggest that accounting systems might be understood both in terms of their impact on sustaining and influencing an organization's culture and language and in terms of their ideological and legitimizing influence in maintaining systems of power and control in organizations. Allowing playfulness in the choice process suggests that accounting systems might be designed to facilitate creativity and innovation in organizations, insofar as these characteristics are appropriate in contributing to organizational effectiveness.     

Growth and Nongrowth Capital Investments and Future Performance*

Most studies on the impact of capital expenditure on future performance use the aggregate capital expenditure disclosed in the cash flow statement. In this study, however, we distinguish between growth capital investments (that increase production capacity) from nongrowth capital investments (that only maintain or reduce current capacity). For growth capital investments, we document a negative association with year-ahead performance, which becomes positive in the subsequent year. For nongrowth capital investments, we observe a non-negative association with year-ahead performance. For nongrowth capital investments, we document a positive association, suggesting that the divestment is beneficial. That is, firms are likely disposing of nonproductive assets. Our results suggest that disclosing the nature of capital investments is important to better assess the future impact of a firm's investment decisions.     

State ownership and the structuring of lease arrangements

The existing literature provides extensive evidence that firms intentionally structured lease arrangements to achieve off-balance-sheet accounting treatment prior to ASU 842 (FASB, 2016) and IFRS 16 (IASB, 2016). However, this study finds the opposite for Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs): compared to non-SOEs, SOEs in China have a higher tendency to use finance leases rather than operating leases. This result remains significant after we control for the possibility that Chinese capital providers are discriminatively extending credit to SOEs in the form of finance leases. We explain SOEs' preference for finance leases by their executives' empire building incentives. Such incentives are created by the executives' hunger for compensation, promotion and subsidies, which are determined by the government. Consistently, we find that SOEs' engagement in finance leases increases with their incentives to expand the firms' size. And indeed, SOE executives obtain more compensation and subsidies by growing their firms with finance leases. Finally, we find that SOEs with higher borrowing costs structure more finance lease arrangements. Such structuring further increases SOEs' financial leverage and, to some extent, decreases their corporate value. Taken together, these results suggest that the benefit of the ASU 842 (or IFRS 16), which aims to bring leased assets onto the balance sheet, may be impaired in situations where executives have strong incentives to build empires.     

The Influence of Management Accounting Departments Within German Municipal Administrations

The achievement of better performance from municipal administrations is an ongoing challenge. We use the contingency theory perspective, which concentrates on the specific environmental settings of organisations, to examine the influence of management accounting departments within German municipal administrations. Our findings indicate that as the size of municipalities increases, the level of their administrative performance decreases. We additionally show that this negative effect can be mitigated when management accounting is seen as being highly relevant and when the management accounting department performs well. Furthermore, a comparison of the accounting systems (cash versus accrual accounting) used in municipal administrations reveals that a successful working management accounting department can only exert a positive effect when the municipal administration acts under an accrual accounting regime.     

Evidence of the impact of mandatory changes in accounting principles on corporate loan agreements

The Theory in this paper predicts that mandatory changes in accounting princples can affect the measurement rules defined in restrictive covenants in firms' lending agreements. Consequently, those mandatory changes can have an impact on the value of a firm's equity, even if the changes appear to be merely ‘cosmetic’. This contracting cost theory is tested by examining of both event-related and cross-sectional abnormal performance of the equity of a sample of firms when the Accounting Princples Board changes accounting princples for business combinations. The theory provides, at best, in incomplete explanation of the observed abnormal performance.     

Attributions,cognitive processes and control systems

This paper reports two experiments which are designed to provide insights into how superiors and subordinates make perceptual or cognitive mappings from accounting signals to causal agents. The experiments focus on superiors' and subordinates' information seeking and causal attribution utilization to explain the subordinate's reported performance. Particular attention is given to (1) asymmetric causal attribution utilization by the superior and the subordinate and (2) the attribution mappings the two actors make when they receive ambiguous signals about the subordinate's reported performance.     

Recognition versus Disclosure: An Investigation of the Impact on Equity Risk Using UK Operating Lease Disclosures

This study examines the equivalency of accounting recognition versus disclosure. OLS regression analysis is used to determine whether there is an association between equity risk and an adjustment to financial risk for off-balance sheet operating leases. Two methods of adjustment are considered: constructive capitalisation and a simple factor method. The observation of a reliably positive association suggests that UK investors/analysts view operating leases from a property rights perspective rather than an ownership perspective. This supports the argument for recognition of all lease rights and obligations 'on-balance sheet', as proposed in the recent G4+1 discussion paper ASB (1999).     

Auditor independence and nonaudit services: Director views and their policy implications

The external auditor's role and relationship with an audit client are not purely matters of private concern between the two parties. The rationale for the external auditor's work—indeed a primary justification for the existence of the public accounting profession—arises from the need for reliable financial information in order for our economy to operate smoothly. Thus the auditor, in certifying financial statements, performs a quasi-public function. The necessary relationship between auditor and client is one of complete independence. In recent years public policymakers including the U.S. Congress have questioned the propriety of auditors' performing nonaudit services for their clients. This paper reports the results of an empirical study of U.S. corporate directors who considered the propriety of allowing a firm's auditors to perform various nonaudit service engagements.The results show, especially in the case of systems design, increasing director concern and a lack of overall consensus as nonaudit services approach 40 percent of the firm's audit fee. Policy implications of the findings are considered.