Labor‐Market Institutions and Long‐Term Effects of Youth Unemployment

Graduating from a school during a time of adverse economic conditions has a persistent, harmful effect on workers’ subsequent employment opportunities. An analysis of panel data from OECD countries during the 1960–2010 periods reveals that a worker who experiences a 1 percentage point higher unemployment rate while the worker is 16–24 years old has a 0.14 percentage point higher unemployment rate at ages 25–29 years and 0.03 percentage points higher at ages 30–34 years. The persistence of this negative effect is stronger in countries with stricter employment protection legislation. A composite index for labor‐market rigidity is constructed and the index is shown to have positive correlation with the persistence. Moderating macroeconomic fluctuations is more important in countries that have more persistent labor‐market entry effects on subsequent outcomes.     

Income smoothing from a Census X-12 perspective

Corporate income smoothing has been the focus of much attention, yet relatively little is known about the key characteristics of income-smoothing firms. To address this issue, the current study uses quarterly data with Census X-12 analysis in a novel way to identify firms where the degree of random variability in earnings is less than the degree of random variability in sales (EVAR < SVAR). Prior research views such firms as effective smoothers, since most firms have scale-free variability profiles in the opposite direction (EVAR > SVAR). Large-sample US results identify these exceptions throughout a broad cross section of firms, but smaller and less profitable firms tended to have a higher incidence rate. Results also indicate that effective smoothers exhibited higher earnings persistence.     

Common Institutional Ownership and Earnings Management*

This study examines the relation between earnings management and block ownership of same‐industry peer firms by a common set of institutional investors (common institutional ownership). This relation is important given the tremendous growth of common institutional ownership and the significant influence of blockholders on financial reporting. We hypothesize that common institutional ownership mitigates earnings management by enhancing institutions' monitoring efficiency and by encouraging institutions to internalize the negative externality of a firm's earnings management on peer firms' investments. Consistent with our hypothesis, we find that higher common institutional ownership is related to less earnings management. Analyses of a quasi‐natural experiment based on financial institution mergers show that this negative relation is unlikely to be driven by the endogeneity of common institutional ownership. Cross‐sectional tests provide evidence that the negative relation is stronger among firms for which common institutional ownership is likely to generate a greater reduction in institutions' information acquisition and processing costs, and among firms whose severe financial misstatements are more likely to distort co‐owned peer firms' investments, supporting both mechanisms underlying our hypothesis. Our findings inform the ongoing debate on the costs and benefits of common institutional ownership by highlighting an important benefit: the enhanced monitoring of financial reporting.     

风险投资机构参与对公司IPO前盈余管理的影响——基于创业板上市公司的数据

基于创业板上市公司数据,对风险投资机构参与及其特征对我国上市公司IPO前的盈余管理影响进行实证检验,结果显示：风险投资机构参与对上市公司IPO前的盈余管理起到了积极的认证和监督作用。在我国,政府性资本占主要地位的风险投资机构更多地发挥了正面认证和监督作用。风险投资机构的声誉和数量对上市公司IPO前的盈余管理发挥了较大作用,风险投资机构的声誉越高、数量越多,上市公司IPO前一年的盈余管理程度越低。风险投资机构总持股比例与盈余管理程度无显著关系。     

公允价值模式下投资性房地产计量探析--以ST上控为例

采用公允价值计量,企业的财务状况和经营成果能更加公允、恰当地反映,但是不完善的外部市场机制和无法忽略的监管披露成本,会影响企业的选择,在ST公司当中尤为明显。本文以投资性房地产为例,分析在2010—2012年度ST公司对其采用公允价值模式计量的情况,并以ST上控作为案例进行分析,以探究选择公允价值模式计量投资性房地产的财务效应和ST企业在进行会计政策选择时面临的问题所在。最后,通过本案例,分析了如何完善企业的外部监管制度和如何保证企业更加理性地进行会计政策选择。     

盈余管理方向与企业投资效率

以2008—2010年沪深A股上市公司为研究样本,从盈余管理的不同方向考察盈余管理程度对企业投资效率的影响,研究发现：适度的正向盈余管理有助于缓和企业投资不足,但过度的正向盈余管理反而会恶化企业投资不足;负向盈余管理往往会伴随产生投资不足的问题。适度的正向盈余管理能够提振投资者信心,从而缓解企业的融资约束。监管部门应该能够容忍企业进行适度的盈余管理,而不是一味地强调所谓“真实的会计信息”。     

Inflation Targeting Around the World

This paper examines the inflation record of twenty-nine inflation- and noninflation-targeting economies. Both industrial and emerging market economies are considered. Empirical evidence is based on a comparison of actual and forecasted inflation, an econometric analysis that estimates changes in inflation persistence, and an estimate of the probability of a breach in the inflation target as a proxy for the fragility of the targeting regime. I find that inflation persistence has fallen in only a handful of emerging market economies. However, the inflationtargeting regime is not especially fragile in emerging market economies. As these economies gain experience with inflation targets and respond appropriately to forecast errors generated by the private sector, the likelihood of breaches in the target ranges tends to fall.     

Has the IASB Been Successful in Making Accounting Earnings More Useful for Prediction and Valuation? UK Evidence

When producing International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), one of the main goals of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) was to create a set of standards which were more useful to investors as a predictive tool. We assess the success of the IASB in achieving this goal by investigating the effects of the introduction of IFRS on the relative information content of reported earnings and forecasted earnings under UK generally accepted accounting practices (GAAP) and IFRS. Results indicate that the value relevance of forecasted earnings is significantly lower under IFRS while the value relevance of reported earnings is significantly larger. These findings suggest that IFRS substitutes price‐relevant information previously provided to the market in the form of analyst forecasts with information encoded by companies in their reported earnings. This implies that the IASB was indeed successful in its stated goal and points towards IFRS forecasts being more accurate and less dispersed than UK GAAP forecasts. This, in turn, implies that analysts are able to provide more informative forecasts under IFRS than under pre‐IFRS regimes and that the aforementioned substitution effect is not a consequence of any decrease in the quality of forecasts under the new regime.     

Earnings Forecasts and the Information Contained in Spinoff Announcements

This study examines spinoff announcements in conjunction with financial analysts’ forecasts of earnings. The analysis shows that spinoff announcement abnormal returns are significantly related to the firm's information environment as proxieci by financial analysts’ earnings prediction errors. The findings also indicate that analysts significantly increase their short-term earnings forecasts in response to spinoffs, but do not significantly revise their long-term earnings forecasts. However, the earnings revisions are not significantly different across prediction error groups, which confirms that spinoff-related abnormal returns cannot be attributed solely to expected performance gains.     

Pitfalls in estimates of the relationship between stock returns and inflation

Empirical tests of the Fisher hypothesis give conflicting results, regardless of whether income growth is accommodated in the estimates. This paper shows theoretically and empirically that standard methods of testing the Fisher hypothesis give biased results and that the bias depends on the specification of the Fisher equation, the process governing inflation, measurement of inflation expectations, and the time aggregation of the data. Alternative tests show that share markets take several years to adjust to innovations in inflation and therefore that the Fisher hypothesis cannot be maintained. Helpful comments and suggestions from Hans Christian Kongsted, Darrel Turkington and seminar participants at the University of Western Australia, and University of Konstanz and, particularly, two referees, are gratefully acknowledged.