Price discovery and microstructure in ether spot and derivative markets

Ethereum is an important blockchain, being the first and most popular public platform for the smart contracts underpinning financial transactions, time-stamping of supply chains, decentralized applications and initial coin offerings. Ethereum's cryptocurrency, ether, is actively traded on centralized exchanges, second only to bitcoin. It has attracted investor's interest primarily because of its intrinsic value – small units of ether called ‘gas’ are used, essentially, as the fuel driving smart contract transactions on the Ethereum blockchain. We ask whether off-chain trading on ether derivatives plays a dominant role in ether spot price discovery, thereby driving ether's utility value for on-chain activity. Using minute-by-minute data we find that the ether perpetual swap on BitMEX, an unregulated cryptocurrency derivative exchange, has dominant trading volume and price discovery over the major spot exchanges. Furthermore, we identify interesting hour-of-day and day-of-week effects in trading volume on the spot exchanges, and these indicate that more informed institutional players are trading ether spot and derivatives.     

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.     

On spillover effects between cryptocurrency-linked stocks and the cryptocurrency market: Evidence from Australia

This paper categorizes Australian listed cryptocurrency-linked stocks (CLS) by their involvement as a user, developer and diffuser, and investor of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies based on company announcements and published information on the company websites. By distinguishing CLS engagement with blockchain technology, we examine their returns and volatility spillover with the cryptocurrency market over the period 1 September 2017 to 7 June 2018, spanning important episodes and dynamics in the cryptocurrency market in 2017-2018, and the emergence of Australian CLS. Utilizing the Diebold and Yilmaz (2012) spillover methodology, we find significant unidirectional return spillover and weak volatility spillover from the cryptocurrency market to CLS, after controlling return dynamics of the Australian dollar, Gold and commodity. However, CLS with high involvement in blockchain technology displays stronger connectedness to the cryptocurrency market through return spillover relative to low involvement CLS. Our findings indicate that investors incorporate the price dynamics of cryptocurrencies into their trading decisions for CLS.     

The decade-long cryptocurrencies and the blockchain rollercoaster: Mapping the intellectual structure and charting future directions

Recent advances in science mapping allowed to analyze the entire intellectual structure of blockchain and cryptocurrencies in business-related disciplines to identify 174 academic articles as well as 1482 practitioner-oriented articles published since the inception of cryptocurrencies in 2008 to highlight key trends of the published outputs. The results demonstrate academic research done by 389 authors in 296 organizations based in 50 countries that only just initiated the conversation on four major streams of the literature—Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies; blockchain adoption; cryptocurrency and blockchain environment; and business model innovations. When comparing academic scholarship to practitioner-oriented literature, the results demonstrate that practitioners discussed investor-related themes, cryptocurrency intrinsic value, political-economic sphere, and the impact of cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies on the wider society in greater detail. As a result, a number of themes are identified and discussed that could align academic and practitioner interests and provide guidance for further research in this important field.     

The influence of business strategy on annual report readability

Concerns about the complexity of firm disclosures have prompted regulators to initiate projects to improve the readability of annual reports. We investigate business strategy as a determinant of annual report readability. As business strategy fundamentally determines a firm’s product and market domain, technology, and organizational structure, it influences a firm’s operating complexity, environmental uncertainty and information asymmetry. Consequently, business strategy frames the level, wording, and complexity of disclosures. We capture a firm’s business strategy based on the Miles and Snow (1978) strategic typology and measure 10-K readability with Li’s (2008) Fog index. We find that firms pursuing an innovation-oriented prospector strategy have less readable 10-Ks relative to firms pursuing an efficiency-oriented defender strategy. We also find that prospectors display more negative and uncertainty tones while defenders exhibit more litigious tone in their 10-Ks. Our study provides useful insights to policy makers as it suggests that efforts to improve annual report readability may be limited for some firms given that business strategy is a fundamental determinant of readability and pronouncements accommodating different strategic orientations are not feasible.     

Cryptocurrency price prediction using traditional statistical and machine-learning techniques: A survey

Cryptocurrencies are decentralized electronic counterparts of government-issued money. The first and best-known cryptocurrency example is bitcoin. Cryptocurrencies are used to make transactions anonymously and securely over the internet. The decentralization behavior of a cryptocurrency has radically reduced central control over them, thereby influencing international trade and relations. Wide fluctuations in cryptocurrency prices motivate the urgent requirement for an accurate model to predict its price. Cryptocurrency price prediction is one of the trending areas among researchers. Research work in this field uses traditional statistical and machine-learning techniques, such as Bayesian regression, logistic regression, linear regression, support vector machine, artificial neural network, deep learning, and reinforcement learning. No seasonal effects exist in cryptocurrency, making it hard to predict using a statistical approach. Traditional statistical methods, although simple to implement and interpret, require a lot of statistical assumptions that could be unrealistic, leaving machine learning as the best technology in this field, being capable of predicting price based on experience. This article provides a comprehensive summary of the previous studies in the field of cryptocurrency price prediction from 2010 to 2020. The discussion presented in this article will help researchers to fill the gap in existing studies and gain more future insight.     

Open Information Enterprise Transactions: Business Intelligence and Wash and Spoof Transactions in Blockchain and Social Commerce

This paper investigates what are referred to as ‘open information transactions’. Such transactions are in contrast to traditional transactions, where typically two parties to a transaction are the only ones with information about the transaction. For example, in a sale, the seller and the purchaser typically are the only ones with information about the transaction. However, some emerging technologies, such as blockchain accounting, supply chain social media, and hashtag commerce are making information about the transactions potentially openly available to others. This paper investigates some of the implications and strategies that include the use of that open information. For example, open information in accounting and supply chain transactions provides the potential for both business intelligence analysis of the information and possibly misleading and illusory transactions, analogous to those that have garnered the recent attention of the Justice Department in cryptocurrencies. Finally, this paper suggests that blockchain transaction processing will provide reliable information in those settings where there is a “single truth” feed of information flow for the phenomena of interest, no ability to do off‐blockchain transactions (or a large penalty cost) and limitation to a single identity for each enterprise on the blockchain.     

Implications for brokerage firms’ financial disclosures: From CSR perspectives

Given the importance of transparency in today's financial environment, it is surprising that limited research has examined investors’ attitudes toward brokerage firms’ financial disclosures and how their attitudes toward brokerage firms’ financial disclosures influence subsequent responses such as perceived trust and attitude toward brokerage firms. Research on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) practices and the Social Contract Theory suggests that investors may put a relatively high value on brokerage firms that practice financial disclosures responsibly. This research probed the relevance of this assumption by testing the relations among investors’ attitudes toward brokerage firms’ financial disclosures, attitudes toward CSR practices, perceived trust toward brokerage firms, attitudes toward brokerage firms and behavioral intentions toward brokerage firms with a survey study. The study used brokerage firms’ financial disclosures in general as the focus of this study's survey questions and a convenience sample consisting of investors. The results suggested that investors’ positive attitudes toward brokerage firms’ financial disclosures positively enhanced their attitudes toward brokerage firms’ CSR practices and perceived trust toward brokerage firms, whereas investors’ attitudes toward brokerage firms’ CSR practices mediated their attitudes toward financial disclosures to enhancing their perceived trust toward brokerage firms. Moreover, investors’ attitudes toward brokerage firms mediated their perceived trust toward brokerage firms on enhancing their behavioral intentions toward brokerage firms.     

An empirical study of voluntary transfer pricing disclosures in China

This paper empirically investigates the factors that affect the management’s voluntary disclosures of the transfer pricing details of related-party transactions. Using Chinese data from 2004 and 2005, we hypothesize and find that firms that make voluntary disclosures of the pricing methods of related-party transactions are negatively associated with (i) a higher level of earnings management (as captured by abnormal related-party transactions) and (ii) its underlying incentives (as captured by the management’s performance-linked bonuses and the firm’s incentives to achieve earnings targets); further, they are positively associated with (i) a higher percentage of independent directors and (ii) a higher percentage of government ownership. Overall, our findings suggest that earnings management and its incentives, board composition, and ownership structure significantly influence the voluntary disclosure decisions of managers.     

The fair value of a token: How do markets price cryptocurrencies?

With the rise of cryptocurrency tokens as a new asset class, the question of the fair evaluation of a cryptocurrency token has become a question of increasing importance. We estimate the pricing kernel with which users price factors affecting their token holdings. We investigate how traditional risk factors such as market risk are evaluated, as well as how blockchain specific risk factors are priced in. In order to do so, we introduce an asset pricing model and modify its properties to make it applicable to cryptocurrency markets. We group the risk factors into market related and Bitcoin- and Ethereum blockchain specific risk factors. We find that blockchain specific risk factors are priced in. There is evidence that risk factors have moved from Bitcoin to Ethereum specific risk factors with an increasing importance of market factors, providing evidence for a decoupling of on-chain and off-chain trading activity.     

Effects of audit partners on clients’ business risk disclosure

We empirically investigate audit engagement partners’ involvement in business risk disclosure. Specifically, we examine whether the quality of business risk disclosure is influenced by engagement partner tenure and knowledge. We also examine whether the effects of partner tenure and knowledge are similar for Big 4 audit firms and non-Big 4 firms. Since fiscal year 2003, listed companies in Japan have been required to disclose business risk information. Although the business risk information is not audited, auditors concerned about their audit quality may seek to influence clients’ business risk disclosure practices. Giving advice to management on the narrative business risk disclosure can contribute to improving the perceived value of the auditor’s services which can be a competitive advantage. Using a sample of Japanese listed companies from 2003 to 2010, we find that if the engagement partners’ tenure is shorter, a company discloses more business risk information and the disclosure is more detailed. Furthermore, companies with audit partners who have a larger number of client engagements disclose larger amounts of business risk information in more detail. However, the engagement partner effects are mitigated if they belong to a Big 4 firm.     

Are required SEC proxy disclosures about the board’s role in risk oversight substantive?

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requires companies it regulates to include disclosures about the board’s role in risk oversight in the annual proxy statement to shareholders. The SEC does not mandate specific content or actions that boards should perform as part of their risk oversight responsibilities, leaving the nature of activities and extent of those disclosures to the discretion of the reporting entity. This study examines whether these disclosures contain substantive information reflective of the effectiveness of the organization’s risk oversight. We find that organizations disclosing more specific information (but not simply more information) about board risk oversight practices are associated with firms independently assessed as having the strongest management and governance processes. These findings suggest that these firms use the discretion provided by the SEC’s disclosure rule to provide substantive and potentially value-relevant information for stakeholders about the entity’s risk management processes and board risk oversight activities.     

Do related party transactions affect family firm valuations?

We examine the likelihood and value relevance of related party transactions in family firms. Based on an extensive hand-collected sample, we find that founder-led family firms are more likely to enter into related party transactions than other firms. We also find that the founder-led family firm valuation premium is reduced when these firms disclose related party transactions, especially opportunistic related party transactions. We also examine the significant change in related party transaction reporting regulations enacted in 2006 and find that it led to a decline in the number of value-decreasing related party transactions for founder-led family firms. We find a corresponding decrease in the detrimental effect of related party transactions on founder-led family firms’ valuation. Our results suggest that changes in the 2006 SEC related party transaction reporting regulations better protected minority shareholders from wealth extraction via related party transactions in founder-led family firms.     

Risk reporting quality: implications of academic research for financial reporting policy

In this paper, I survey empirical research on the relevance of firms’ financial report information for the evaluation of their risk. I recommend that financial reporting policymakers require or encourage firms to enhance their risk reporting quality in four ways. First, firms should report comprehensive income statements that: (1) use fair value or a similarly information-rich accounting measurement attribute and (2) separate the components of comprehensive income that are primarily driven by variation in cash flows from those that are primarily driven by variation in costs of capital. Such comprehensive income statements would provide users of financial reports with the flexibility to calculate alternative summary accounting numbers and to perform different types of risk assessment analyses. Second, firms should conduct and disclose the results of back-tests of prior significant accrual estimates, indicating any identified trends in and drivers of revisions to those estimates, and describing the effects of those revisions on current or future summary accounting numbers. Third, firms should aggregate and present risk disclosures in tabular or other well-structured formats that promote the usability of the information. Identifying existing best disclosure practices and encouraging new best practices are the most natural way to do this. Fourth, for model-dependent risk disclosures, firms should disclose the primary historical and forward-looking attributes of the models and their implementation in practice, sensitivity of the model outputs, and benchmarking of the models to standard portfolios of exposures.     

“The first mile problem”: Deriving an endogenous demand for auditing in blockchain-based business processes

In this paper, we model the business process within which blockchain applications operate in order to extract an endogenous demand for auditing in that environment. We begin by undertaking a case study of the pharmaceutical drug industry supply chain, exploring both the proposed blockchain initiatives in it initiated by the FDA and startup companies, and the problems in the supply chain that blockchain cannot address. Drawing on this analysis, we derive an endogenous demand for auditing to overcome what we label the “first mile problem” (FMP) with blockchains: ensuring that the data stored on the blockchain distributed ledger is isomorphic with the real life data that it purports to represent. The first mile problem arises only when the blockchain is used to store data about physical items, especially ones involving a service component, rather than being native digital, as is the case with the genesis blockchain application, bitcoin. We show that unless it is feasible to store a “digital twin” of the item (Roberts, 2017), there is a role for auditors, with the training in professional skepticism, to help alleviate the first mile problem. There is no guarantee, however, that this new demand for auditing will be met by the traditional financial statement auditors.     

Dependence and risk spillovers among clean cryptocurrencies prices and media environmental attention

This paper examines the relationships among cryptocurrency environmental attention and clean cryptocurrencies prices using Time-Varying Parameter Vector Auto-Regression (TVP-VAR) and wavelets techniques. Results show strong connectedness among these variables, implying that the prices of clean cryptocurrencies are influenced by attention on cryptocurrency sustainability. Connectedness is stronger with positive shocks on environmental attention than negative shocks. Also, in the short-term, clean cryptocurrencies prices lead environmental attention, especially after 2021. However, there are notable periods when environmental attention led clean cryptocurrency prices before 2021. In the long-term, clean cryptocurrencies such as Hedera, Polygon, Cosmos, IOTA, TRON, Stellar, Tezos and Ripple lead environmental attention. In the presence of bitcoin, the degrees of connectedness increased across both shocks on cryptocurrency environmental attention. In all cases, the bitcoin market is the main destination of shocks from the system. We highlight some crucial implications of these results.     

The usefulness of firm risk disclosures under different firm riskiness,investor-interest,and market conditions: New evidence from Finland

To date, there is only meager research evidence on the usefulness of mandatory annual report risk disclosures to investors. Although it has been argued that corporate disclosure decreases information asymmetry between management and shareholders, we do not know whether investors benefit from high-quality risk reporting in a highly regulated risk disclosure environment. In this paper, we performed association tests to examine whether the quality of firms' mandatory risk disclosures relate to information asymmetry in the Finnish stock markets. In addition, we analyzed whether the usefulness of risk disclosures depends on contingency factors such as firm riskiness, investor interest, and market condition. We demonstrate that the quality of risk disclosure has a direct negative influence on information asymmetry. We also document that risk disclosures are more useful if they are provided by small firms, high tech firms, and firms with low analyst coverage. We also found that momentum in stock markets affects the relevance of firms' risk reports.     

The information content of mandatory risk factor disclosures in corporate filings

Beginning in 2005, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) mandated firms to include a “risk factor” section in their Form 10-K to discuss “the most significant factors that make the company speculative or risky.” In this study, we examine the information content of this newly created section and offer two main results. First, we find that firms facing greater risk disclose more risk factors, and that the type of risk the firm faces determines whether it devotes a greater portion of its disclosures towards describing that risk type. That is, managers provide risk factor disclosures that meaningfully reflect the risks they face. Second, we find that the information conveyed by risk factor disclosures is reflected in systematic risk, idiosyncratic risk, information asymmetry, and firm value. Overall, our evidence supports the SEC’s decision to mandate risk factor disclosures, as the disclosures appear to be firm-specific and useful to investors.     

Strategic Subsidiary Disclosure

Although subsidiary disclosures in firms’ filings with the Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC; Exhibit 21) represent the most granular required public disclosure of a firm's geographic footprint, little is understood about the quality of the disclosure, and anecdotal evidence suggests firms may not fully comply with the disclosure requirements. We use data provided by multinational firms to the Internal Revenue Service regarding their foreign subsidiary locations to explore the accuracy of public subsidiary disclosures on Exhibit 21 of Form 10-K per SEC rules. The overall incidence of nondisclosure is low, suggesting that most firms comply with Exhibit 21 disclosure rules, and that for most applications, Exhibit 21 disclosures provide a reasonable proxy for locations of significant subsidiaries. Nevertheless, there is some evidence of nondisclosure, particularly when subsidiaries are in tax havens, when the firm is more highly scrutinized in the media, or when the firm has other characteristics consistent with low-quality disclosures such as SEC comment letters.