Can corporate governance deter management from manipulating earnings? Evidence from related-party sales transactions in China

This study investigates whether good governance structures help constrain management's opportunistic behaviors (in the form of transfer pricing manipulations) in one of the world's most dynamic economies. Our data are a unique sample of 266 companies listed on the Shanghai stock exchange that disclose gross profit ratios on related-party transactions. We find that firms with a board that has a higher percentage of independent directors or a lower percentage of “parent” directors (i.e., directors who are representatives of the parent companies of the listed firms), or have different people occupying the chair and CEO positions, or have financial experts on their audit committees, are less likely to engage in transfer pricing manipulations. Overall, our research findings reveal that the quality of corporate governance is important in deterring the use of manipulated transfer prices in related-party sales transactions.     

Institutional investors and earnings management associated with controlling shareholders' promises: Evidence from the split share structure reform in China

We examine the effectiveness of institutional investors in constraining aggressive earnings management induced by strong contractual incentives. To this end we focus on the consequences of earnings-related promises (covenants) negotiated between corporate controlling shareholders and minority shareholders during China’s split-share structure reform, wherein failure to achieve profit benchmarks had the potential to transfer significant wealth from controlling to minority shareholders. Our initial analysis provides evidence that profit-promised firm-years are, on average, associated with income-increasing earnings management, and that this association is stronger for: (i) firm-years in which the profit-promise was satisfied, and (ii) firm-years in which proxies for the level of unmanaged earnings suggest that earnings management was needed to satisfy the promise. However, such benchmark-beating behavior is weaker for firms with higher levels of institutional ownership. Further analysis documents that the exit threat of institutional shareholders can discipline earnings management associated with profit promises. We also show that the effect of institutional shareholders in reducing earnings management associated with profit promises is greater for domestic mutual funds and for privately controlled firms. Interestingly, our evidence suggests that institutional investors only play an effective monitoring role over earnings management when their incentives are strongly aligned with those of other minority owners. In other cases, our evidence suggests that these investors may exacerbate the level of earnings management.     

Managerial risk-taking incentives and non-GAAP earnings disclosures

We investigate the association between risk-taking incentives provided by stock-based compensation arrangements and non-GAAP financial disclosures. Controlling for compensation to stock price sensitivity, we find that managers with higher compensation to stock volatility sensitivity (vega) are more likely to be associated with voluntary non-GAAP earnings information disclosures. In addition, higher-vega managers are found to be associated with more frequent and less opportunistic non-GAAP earnings information disclosures. Robust to alternative specifications and estimations, our findings suggest that compensation arrangements can encourage managers to make more, higher-quality voluntary non-GAAP disclosures.     

股权制衡、法律保护与控股股东侵占——来自中国A股民营上市公司关联交易的实证分析

控股股东利用关联交易对中小投资者利益进行侵占已经成为公司治理研究中最重要的问题。本文采用中国A股民营上市公司的相关数据,从关联交易规模的角度实证检验了股权制衡因素和外部投资者法律保护对于控股股东侵占的影响。研究结果发现,股权制衡程度越高,控股股东的侵占水平会越低;但是法律保护和股权制衡之间存在替代关系,两者对于控股股东侵占的作用具有一定的重合性,如果同步提高的话,可能会削弱股权制衡对于控股股东侵占的限制作用。     

Institutional Investor Protection Pressures versus Firm Incentives in the Disclosure of Integrated Reporting

Corporate disclosures aim to decrease the expectation gap between investors, decrease the advantage of informed investors and consequently reduce information asymmetry. However, the existence of higher numbers of companies’ reports makes the decision making of firms’ stakeholders difficult. To avoid these problems, companies have started to disclose integrated reports. Previous studies have observed that this voluntary corporate disclosure is a consequence of large firms’ incentives associated with preventing abnormal earnings. In this paper, we examine whether these internal factors have a lower/higher impact than institutional contracting pressures. Our results are evidence that firms’ incentives are the main determinants of the voluntary disclosure of integrated reports, and we observe that there is a substitutive role between institutional country pressures and firms’ transparency decisions. However, the contracting environment plays a complementary role when firms suffer from lower asymmetry problems.     

Voluntary disclosure and corporate innovation

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting - We examine whether a firm’s voluntary disclosures, proxied by management earnings forecasts, affect its innovation activity. A firm making more...     

Protection or expropriation: Politically connected independent directors in China

This paper empirically investigates politically connected independent directors among Chinese listed firms using 7487 firm-year observations from the Shanghai stock exchange during the period of 2003–2012. We distinguish between privately controlled firms and state-controlled firms. We find that the value effect and incentives of appointing independent directors with political ties are shaped by a firm’s ownership structure. More exactly, Chinese listed privately controlled firms with a large fraction of politically connected independent directors tend to outperform their non-connected counterparts, due to the ease of access to external debt financing and more subsidies from the government. However, the appointment of politically connected independent directors also enlarges the magnitude of related-party transactions with the controlling party in listed privately controlled firms. In contrast, having politicians as independent directors does not help to add value to listed state-controlled firms, especially firms controlled by the local government, due to the expropriation of minority investors via more related-party transactions and more severe over-investment problems.     

Voluntary disclosure practices by foreign firms cross-listed in the United States

This is one of the first large-scale studies to examine the voluntary disclosure practices of foreign firms cross-listed in the United States. We proxy for voluntary disclosure using three attributes of firms’ management earnings guidance: (1) the likelihood of issuance; (2) the frequency of earnings guidance; and (3) a guidance quality measure. After first establishing that market participants view these firms’ disclosures as credible and economically important (i.e., the disclosures are negatively related to analyst forecast errors and the implied cost of equity capital), we compare cross-listed firms’ disclosure practices with comparable US firms and explore variations in disclosure practices among cross-listed firms. We find that cross-listed firms issue less frequent and lower quality management earnings guidance than comparable US firms. We further show that the gap between US and cross-listed firms widened after passage of Regulation FD, a regulation which induced greater public disclosure of firm-specific information. Focusing on the sample of cross-listing firms, we show that firms from common-law countries disclose more than firms from code-law countries. Finally, our results indicate that cross-listed firms that do not list on an organized US exchange provide more frequent and higher quality disclosure than those that do list on organized exchanges.     

Voluntary fair value disclosures beyond SFAS 157’s three-level estimates

Some firms voluntarily make disclosures about the controls and processes in place to ensure the reliability of fair value estimates. Consistent with these disclosures being driven by investors’ concerns about the reliability of their SFAS 157 estimates, we find that firms with more opaque estimates are more likely to provide such disclosures. We then examine whether these disclosures improve investors’ perception about the reliability of fair value estimates. We find that they are associated with higher market pricing and lower information risk for Level 3 estimates. Further analyses of the disclosures reveal that the following types of information are particularly important to investors: discussion of the external and independent pricing of fair value estimates and their proper classification according to the SFAS 157 hierarchy. Overall, our results suggest that the voluntary reliability disclosures that firms provide beyond SFAS 157’s three-level estimates help reduce investors’ uncertainty toward the more opaque fair value estimates.     

Contemporaneous verification of language: evidence from management earnings forecasts

Research documents that linguistic tone is incrementally informative about stock returns. What remains a puzzle is the mechanism by which investors can assess its credibility. We examine whether contemporaneous information in management earnings forecasts serves as a timely alternative to ex post verification. We document that ex post verifiable quantitative news in unbundled forecasts, and characteristics of the linguistic tone itself, affect investors’ pricing of tone. Consistent with higher quality signals enhancing the credibility of contemporaneous lower quality signals, we find that quantitative news verifies the associated linguistic tone; when the two signals have the same sign, the price effect of tone is stronger. Furthermore, the pricing attenuation of tone is increasing in the imprecision of the quantitative forecast, suggesting that lower forecast quality compromises the quantitative signal’s credibility enhancement. Managerial incentives to inflate tone lead to the verification effect being greater for optimistic language, while management’s use of hyperbole results in attenuation of the tone’s pricing.     

Effect of disclosure regulation on earnings management through related-party transactions: Evidence from Taiwanese firms operating in China

This study examines the effect of disclosure regulation on earnings management using Taiwanese companies conducting transactions with China as the institutional setting. Measuring earnings management by the amount of discretionary accruals (DACCs), the study shows that disclosure regulation mitigates DACCs of Taiwanese firms engaging in related-party transactions with Chinese entities. Following enactment of the disclosure regulation in November 2000, DACCs among Taiwanese enterprises conducting transactions via offshore affiliates dropped. While the disclosure regulation helps to reduce earnings management, this study reports that such effect is asymmetric between high-tech firms and non–high-tech firms. Specifically, the disclosure regulation is effective in reducing earnings management among firms in non–high-tech sectors. However, such effect is not significant among firms in high-tech sectors. This study discusses the implications of empirical findings for corporate management, regulatory agencies, and firm stakeholders.     

Institutional incentives and earnings quality: The influence of government ownership in China

We examine the effect of government ownership and its associated institutional incentives on firms’ earnings quality using a sample of Chinese firms during the transitional economy between 1998 and 2005 when state-owned and non-state-owned firms were traded in the stock exchanges. We find that, in China, state-owned firms exhibit a lower earnings quality property than non-state-owned firms. Particularly, state-owned firms have more earnings smoothing, more frequently managed earnings toward target, less frequent timely recognition of losses, and less value relevance, relative to non-state-owned firms. We also find that state-owned firms have significantly higher discretionary current accruals than non-state-owned firms. We conclude that the Chinese government, through its controlling ownership of state-owned firms, creates incentives and regulatory backing for self-serving purposes that negatively influence these listed firms’ financial reporting.     

The association between quarter length,forecast errors,and firms’ voluntary disclosures

Approximately 60 percent of adjacent fiscal quarters contain a different number of calendar days. In preliminary analyses, we find the change in quarter length is significantly associated with the changes in sales and earnings and that analysts condition on the prior quarter's results when making their forecasts. These results indicate that it is important for analysts to adjust for changes in quarter length when making forecasts. However, we find the quarterly change in days is positively associated with analysts’ sales and earnings forecasts errors, where forecast error equals the actual earnings minus the forecasted earnings. These results indicate that analysts systematically underestimate (overestimate) performance when quarter length increases (decreases). We find evidence indicating investors make similar errors as returns around earnings announcements are positively associated with the change in quarter length, but only when changes in firm performance is more sensitive to changes in quarter length. Corroborating these findings, managers are more (less) likely to discuss quarter length during conference calls when quarter length decreases (increases). These results are consistent with managers’ strategic disclosure incentives. In summary, our evidence suggests analysts and investors fail to fully take account of the quasi-mechanical effect that quarter length has on firm performance and managers strategically alter their voluntary disclosures to take advantage of these failures.     

Rationalizing forecast inefficiency

We show analysts’ own earnings forecasts predict error in their own forecasts of earnings at other horizons, which we argue provides a measure of the extent to which analysts inefficiently use information. We construct our measure by exploiting two sources of variation in analysts’ incentives: (i) more recent forecasts have greater salience at the time of the earnings release so accuracy incentives are higher (lower) at shorter (longer) forecast horizons and (ii) analysts have greater incentives for optimism (pessimism) at longer (shorter) horizons. Consistent with these incentives affecting the incorporation of information into forecasts, we document (i) current year forecasts underweight (overweight) information in shorter (longer) horizon forecasts and (ii) the mis-weighting is more pronounced when recent news is negative—when analysts have greater (weaker) incentives to incorporate the news into shorter (longer) horizon forecasts. Finally, returns tests suggest that forecasts adjusted for the inefficiency we document better represent market expectations of earnings.

     

Management Risk Incentives and the Readability of Corporate Disclosures

Managers with higher risk incentives (greater options vega) issue less readable disclosures. Firms in the top quartile of vega file annual reports that are about 15.4% more voluminous than those in the bottom quartile. The effect of vega on obfuscation remains after controlling for firm risk, operating complexities, accounting and auditor choices, chief executive officer changes, and an exogenous shock to option compensation. This effect is tempered by higher institutional ownership, lower management entrenchment, and greater analyst following. Obfuscation benefits managers by increasing return volatility (option value) and allowing greater earnings management. These findings document a new link between options and disclosure transparency.     

Interaction between securitization gains and abnormal loan loss provisions: Credit risk retention and fair value accounting

This study investigates whether managers use asset securitization gains to substitute loan loss provision (LLP) management for earnings management, and, if so, whether the percentage of credit risk retained affects such a relationship. The literature provides evidence that managers have used securitization transactions to boost earnings. Using 2001?2014 data for a sample of bank holding companies, I find that managers use securitization gains and LLPs as partial substitutes and that earnings management from securitization gains grows at an increasing rate to substitute income increasing LLP management as the level of risk retention increases. These findings are consistent with the argument that the higher the level of risk retention, the greater the potential impact on achieving earnings targets, given banks’ exercise of discretion over securitization gains through estimation of fair value of retained interest. In addition, I document that the substitution effect between the two tools is non‐existent in the post‐SFAS 166/167 period. Taken together, the findings have timely implications for accounting standards by informing the effect of risk retention that I measure through earnings management techniques. Moreover, my findings provide additional support for improved disclosures on assets‐backed securities.     

Dynamic Effects of Information Disclosure on Investment Efficiency

This paper studies how information disclosure affects investment efficiency and investor welfare in a dynamic setting in which a firm makes sequential investments to adjust its capital stock over time. We show that the effects of accounting disclosures on investment efficiency and investor welfare crucially depend on whether such disclosures convey information about the firm's future capital stock (i.e., balance sheet) or about its future operating cash flows (i.e., earnings). Specifically, investment efficiency and investor welfare unambiguously increase in the precision of disclosures that convey information about the future capital stock, since such disclosures mitigate the current owners' incentives to underinvest. In contrast, when accounting reports provide information about future cash flows, the firm can have incentives to either under‐ or overinvest depending on the precision of accounting reports and the expected growth in demand. For such disclosures, investment efficiency and investor welfare are maximized by an intermediate level of precision. The two types of accounting disclosures act as substitutes in that the precision of capital stock disclosures that maximizes investment efficiency (and investor welfare) decreases as cash flow disclosures become more informative and vice versa.     

How do auditors view managers’ voluntary disclosure strategy? The effect of earnings guidance on audit fees

The objective of this study is to examine the relation between attributes of earnings forecasts issued by managers and audit fees. Although there is an extensive literature on managers’ disclosure of earnings forecasts, there is a paucity of research on how auditors incorporate information from these voluntary disclosures. We find that the issuance of an annual or quarterly management earnings forecast in the prior period is positively associated with the current period audit fees. Our results indicate that on average, audit fees are higher by about 7% for firm-years associated with an annual forecast. Among the firms that issue earnings forecasts, we find no association between audit fees and likelihood of updating a previously issued earnings forecast, indicating that auditors do not view such behavior negatively. Further, we find audit fees to be positively associated with the error and the bias (or optimism) in the forecasts for annual forecasts but not for quarterly forecasts. Overall, these results suggest that management’s forecast behavior captures higher business risk for the auditor via greater risk of earnings management or litigation risk.     

Does voluntary balance sheet disclosure mitigate post-earnings-announcement drift?

Theory suggests that balance sheet information such as total assets, total equity, or total liabilities complements earnings information in helping investors assess a firm’s profitability and estimate earnings growth. The voluntary disclosure of balance sheet information at earnings announcement could help investors gather and process this information at a lower cost. We therefore predict that voluntary balance sheet disclosure at the time of an earnings announcement helps investors promptly understand the implication of current earnings news for future earnings and subsequently reduces post-earnings-announcement drift (PEAD). Consistent with these predictions, our results show that when firms provide voluntary balance sheet disclosures, the earnings response coefficient in the event window is significantly higher and the corresponding PEAD is significantly lower. We further find that the impact of voluntary balance sheet disclosure on PEAD is more pronounced when the magnitude of balance sheet value surprise is larger, when balance sheet value is more informative about future earnings, when earnings uncertainty is higher, or when information cost is higher, consistent with our conjectures that helping investors to better understand future earnings performance and lowering information costs are key mechanisms underlying the effect of voluntary balance sheet disclosure on PEAD.