年报语调与企业财务绩效：心口如一还是心口不一？

将传统的管理学和文本分析方法相融合,基于信息经济学理论,以2011—2019年中国A股非金融企业为研究样本,采用OLS回归模型考察年报语调对财务绩效的影响。研究结果表明:年报语调与企业财务绩效之间存在显著的“倒U型”曲线关系,适度积极的年报语调能够显著提升企业的财务绩效,异常乐观的年报语调则不利于企业财务绩效的提升,并且这种关系在非国有、分析师关注度高以及处于初创期、增长期和衰退期的样本企业中更加显著。进一步研究发现,市场估值水平和经营不确定性会强化年报语调与企业财务绩效之间的“倒U型”关系。有关结论丰富和拓展了年报语调对企业经济后果影响的研究,可以为信息使用者合理利用文本信息做出科学决策提供重要的理论参考。     

Employment quality and 10-K report readability

This study examines the relationship between firms’ employment quality and annual report readability. Using 9,366 U.S. firm-year observations from 1994 to 2018, we find that a favorable employment quality is positively associated with a more readable 10-K report. Such a positive relationship can be observed when firms recruit industry-specialist auditors and when employees are considered important stakeholders to the firm. However, we find a negative association between employment quality and 10-K report readability when there is a presence of firm-level unionization. Our findings inform policymakers that initiatives to promote disclosure readability may be undermined by firms that place less emphasis on employment quality. Further, firm-level unionization can reduce the incentive for firms with a favorable employment quality to provide readable disclosures.     

Corporate environmental responsibility and bank loans

Drawing on both qualitative analyses of banks' sustainability reports and quantitative analyses of 11,538 bank loans from 1993 to 2018, we explore interactions between corporate environmental responsibility (CER) and bank loan contracting. We find CER dominates how corporate social responsibility (CSR) affects bank loans. We propose a two-way relationship between CER and bank loans. Firms with strong CER performance receive cheaper bank loans due to banks' environmental risk management efforts. These banks provide services to corporate borrowers that have a positive influence on borrowers' ongoing environmental performance.     

Costs of voting and firm performance: Evidence from RegTech adoption in Chinese listed firms

Employing the 2014 mandatory adoption of online shareholder voting in China, we show that the reduction of voting costs through online voting is positively related to participation in shareholder meetings and future firm performance. Our mechanism analysis suggests that the improved firm performance is mainly driven by the enhanced governance role played by informed investors and institutional investors. Further analysis shows that online shareholder voting makes the firms more attractive to mutual fund managers who are far away from the firms. Moreover, we find that the improved firm performance is concentrated in firms with low controlling shareholder ownership, and that online shareholder voting is associated with an increased likelihood of vetoing proposals and lower tunneling.     

Institutional investors' corporate site visits and corporate investment efficiency

This study examines the association between institutional investors' corporate site visits (CSVs) and the visited firms' investment efficiency. Using unique CSVs' data from China, this study provides empirical evidence that institutional investors' CSVs lessen the visited firms' corporate investment inefficiency, including both over- and underinvestment. The negative relationship between CSVs and investment inefficiency is less pronounced for firms with higher quality financial reporting and better corporate governance. In addition, CSVs show a decrease in corporate overinvestment by monitoring the risk-taking activities of younger CEOs and expansionary firms, and supervising the use of excess free cash flows. Meanwhile, CSVs could mitigate underinvestment by reducing managerial shirking from entrenched CEOs, such as dual or longer-tenured CEOs. The possible economic mechanism behind this association is that CSVs increase institutional shareholding percentages. All the main findings are robust to a battery of endogeneity and robustness tests.     

企业避税与年报可读性

避税活动加剧了企业的信息不对称，管理层在信息披露中是否会采用晦涩的文本信息掩盖避税行为？本文利用2008—2017年中国A股上市公司数据，考察企业避税对年报可读性的影响及其机制。结果发现，避税活动越多，企业年报采用的复杂词汇就越多，年报可读性就越差。在运用工具变量弱化内生性问题、更替年报可读性指标与企业避税指标、考虑递延所得税信息披露和税收政策影响等一系列稳健性检验后，避税行为降低企业年报可读性的结论依然成立。机制分析发现会计信息质量在避税行为对年报可读性的影响中发挥了部分中介作用，避税活动通过降低会计信息质量削弱了年报可读性，信息披露中文本信息与数字信息相配合的观点从企业避税视角得到了验证。此外，在无税收优惠、递延所得税负债较多和外部治理环境较差的企业中，避税降低年报可读性的现象更为明显。因此，规范企业税收制度能够减少企业避税、限制管理层寻租行为，促进税收透明化，从而提高企业的信息披露质量。     

Financial controller turnover: An early warning sign of deteriorating financial reporting quality

This study examines the relation between financial controller turnover and public firms’ financial reporting quality. Exploiting a special institutional setting in China, where financial controllers along with CEOs and CFOs are required to attest to the accuracy and completeness of firms’ annual reports, we find that: (a) financial controller turnover is negatively associated with financial reporting quality, (b) the negative relation between financial controller turnover and financial reporting quality is more pronounced in non-state-owned enterprises, in firms with weaker corporate governance, and in areas with higher regulatory enforcement intensity, and (c) financial controller turnover is not related to real earnings management. Further analyses show that financial controller turnover is associated with the incidence of subsequent financial report restatements and enforcement actions by the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC). Financial controller turnover also precedes top executive turnover and can be viewed as an early warning sign of deteriorating financial reporting quality. Such information content is incremental to that of top executive turnover. Our analyses also show that firms with financial controller turnover have higher initial stock returns but underperform their counterparts in the long run.     

证券交易所一线监管与会计稳健性——基于年报问询函的证据

会计信息缺乏稳健性损害了股东和债权人的利益，如何进行有效监管是学界和实务界共同关注的焦点问题。选取2015—2019年沪深A股上市公司为研究对象，实证分析沪深交易所年报问询函制度对会计稳健性的治理效果，研究发现，年报问询函显著提高了被问询企业的会计稳健性，且当同一年报被问询次数越多、年报问询函问题数量越多、年报问询函需要中介机构发表意见、企业延期回函时，提升作用越大。进一步分析发现，对于负债率较高、内部控制质量较差的企业，年报问询函的监管效果更佳，同时监管依赖于信息环境，当企业信息环境较好时效果更明显；作用机制检验表明，年报问询函通过降低信息不对称、提高独立董事履职独立性和强化投资者关注来提高会计稳健性。结论表明，年报问询函能有效提高上市公司信息质量，发挥一线监管职能，为监管层进一步“加强事中事后监管，完善分级分类监管”及提高上市公司会计稳健性提供了政策思路。     

Asset redeployability and readability of annual report

We examine the impact of holding more redeployable assets on the readability of annual reports. Building on prior research, we develop two competing hypotheses. Using a large panel sample of 67,022 firm-year observations for the period of 1993–2018, we find that the annual reports of firms with more redeployable assets are easier to read and understand. We further obtain consistent results after performing a battery of robustness and endogeneity checks. Overall, our study joins the debate on whether holding more redeployable assets is beneficial or detrimental to a company and contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of asset redeployability.     

Investor reactions to key audit matters: Financial and non-financial contexts

We investigate how a disclosed risk item and key audit matter (KAM) relatedness combine to affect investors' riskiness assessment in financial and non-financial contexts. When management disclose a high-risk item, we find that investors react the same way across contexts with KAM relatedness having no effect. When management disclose a low-risk item, investors react differently in each context. When a KAM is related to the disclosed financial (non-financial) low-risk item, investors assess investment riskiness higher (lower) than when a KAM is unrelated to the low-risk item. Our findings indicate the varying communicative value of KAMs across financial and non-financial contexts.