数字经济时代会计变革及对策

随着数字经济时代的来临，以人工智能技术为代表的现代信息技术越来越多地应用到会计工作中，会计工作将进入数字会计时代，向共享会计、管理会计、智能会计发展。为了适应数字经济带来的变化，会计机构要成为企业的“数据中心”，发挥管理和服务职能。会计人员要积极学习现代信息技术和管理知识，实现由核算型向管理型转型。     

体外孵化项目的合法会计信息失真研究——以爱尔眼科为例

新经济、新业态的发展,新商业模式不断涌现,会计信息生产者按已有的会计准则和职业判断进行确认、计量、记录和报告,路径依赖下的会计处理程序可能会形成合法性信息失真。体外孵化成为企业扩张的加速器,也是隐藏风险的“雷”,目前的会计处理程序展现了一份资产、利润都高速增长的财务报表,而交易的风险可能被隐匿。本文以运用并购基金实现体外孵化的典型案例爱尔眼科作为研究对象,通过阐述体外孵化项目投资逻辑,分析复杂的商业交易造成控制权的模糊,致使其会计信息未反映经济实质以及内含的风险,以此提示信息使用者以及为监管层提供政策建议,当前会计准则和规范滞后商业模式发展,相关部门应该更关注市场的新商业模式以及其会计处理程序和信息披露监管。     

控股家族涉入能促进企业履行环境责任吗？——基于中国A股上市公司的证据

基于2009—2017年我国沪深A股上市公司样本，比较了家族企业与非家族企业所履行的环境责任差异，研究了控股家族涉入对企业环境责任行为的影响。研究结果发现：家族企业比非家族企业更少地履行环境责任；在家族企业中，所有权比例的增加会显著降低环境责任水平，家族成员出任董事长会象征性地披露更多环境责任信息，家族涉入时间与环境责任之间总体上呈现出倒U型关系。进一步研究表明，家族企业会有选择地履行环境责任以维护家族声誉同时减少经济利益损失，控股家族涉入对环境责任的影响在创业型和非创业型家族企业中有所不同，在强制披露的企业中所有权比例对企业环境责任的消极影响会有所减弱。     

企业金融会计的风险防范及控制策略

市场经济体制下,各类型企业业务开展、管理活动开展都会受到行业环境与市场环境的影响。企业在经营发展中需要与“金融”产生很多交集,这也导致企业需要面临一定程度的金融风险威胁。为此,企业需要在金融会计的风险防范及控制上进行更多努力。通过分析可以发现,大多数企业金融会计的风险防范及控制状况并不理想。论文对具体风险防范及控制中存在的不足进行分析,并就如何更好地进行金融会计风险防范及控制提出合理建议。     

高校中级财务会计课程教学改革探讨

中级财务会计是会计学专业的一门主干课程,起着承上启下的重要作用,但在教学过程中还存在许多问题,如重理论轻实践、考核体系单一、教学环节缺乏思政元素等。论文针对这些问题,尝试提出改革教学方式、深化校企合作、多元化考核、强化会计人员职业操守等建议,旨在进一步提升教学质量,突出学生的主人翁地位。     

Precision and Manipulation of Non-financial Information: The Curious Case of Environmental Liability

This paper develops a model showing how the environmental liability regime and the precision of the disclosed environmental performance indicator affect managers’ incentives (1) to reduce actual pollution and (2) to manipulate the reported pollution. I assume a company with a separation of ownership and control which can be held liable for environmental damages and distinguish between a negligence regime and strict liability. The results suggest that if there is no manipulation but only a lack of precision of the disclosed environmental performance indicator, a negligence rule induces lower actual pollution levels than strict liability even though a negligence rule is considered to be more lenient. If managers are able to manipulate the disclosed environmental performance indicator, they will do so and actual pollution levels will generally increase. While manipulation makes it easier for shareholders to escape liability under a negligence regime, shareholders suffer from manipulation under strict liability due to higher actual pollution and higher expected damage compensation payments. Therefore, the manipulation level is higher under a negligence regime. My analysis contributes to the environmental performance and disclosure literature by showing that the liability regime is an important determinant affecting environmental reporting and actual pollution decisions.     

The real effects of a new accounting standard: the case of IFRS 15 Revenue from Contracts with Customers

International Financial Reporting Standard 15 (IFRS 15) Revenue from Contracts with Customers has significantly changed the philosophy of revenue recognition, not only to provide a fairer representation of corporate revenues, but also to inhibit the use of revenues for ‘earnings management’ purposes. We provide a framework to analyse the various effects of new and amended accounting standards. Changes in how companies recognise, measure, present and disclose their revenues (accounting effects) can affect how companies and their transactions are understood, both internally and externally (information effects), can change security prices (capital market effects) and can change how companies operate, and their costs and cash flows (real effects). We provide empirical evidence, based on a review of corporate annual reports, comment letters and interviews, on the effects of IFRS 15. We find evidence of accounting, information and, to a lesser extent, real effects, although, outside a few industries, IFRS 15 has had relatively little impact on the recognition and measurement of revenue.     

Why Do Politicians Intervene in Accounting Regulation? The Role of Ideology and Special Interests

Politicians frequently intervene in the regulation of financial accounting. Evidence from the accounting literature shows that regulatory capture by special interests helps explain these interventions. However, many accounting rules have broad economic or social consequences, such as their effects on income distribution or private sector subsidies. The perception of these consequences varies with a politician's ideology. Therefore, if accounting rules produce those consequences, ideology plausibly spills over and explains a politician's stance on the technical accounting issue, beyond special interest pressure. We use two prominent U.S. political debates about fair value accounting and the expensing of employee stock options to disentangle the role of ideology from special interest pressure. In both debates, ideology explains politicians’ involvement at exactly those points when the debate focuses on the economic consequences of accounting regulation (i.e., bank bailouts and top management compensation). Once the debates focus on more technical issues, connections to special interests remain the dominant force.     

Have SFAS 166 and SFAS 167 improved the financial reporting for securitizations?

Critics have alleged that securitization accounting prior to 2010 was among the causes of the recent financial crisis. In response to this criticism, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) implemented two new accounting standards, SFAS 166 and SFAS 167, to improve the financial reporting for securitizations. Bank regulators have stated their belief that SFAS 166/167 will result in a consolidated balance sheet (and risk-based capital ratios based thereupon) that better reflects a bank's exposure to risk related to securitized assets. We document that, by ceding retained power or influence through the servicing/special servicing functions to third parties, SFAS 166/167 resulted in real effects to the extent that banks (particularly those that were weakly capitalized) achieved their accounting objectives in the post-SFAS 166/167 period through legitimate transaction structuring in line with the intent of the new rules. Further, we use capital market participants’ assessments of risk retention by sponsoring banks as a benchmark, and provide evidence consistent with bank regulators’ beliefs. In particular, following SFAS 166/167, equity investors of sponsoring banks do not consider (consider) as risk relevant securitized assets that receive off-balance sheet (on-balance sheet) treatment. Securitized assets that are consolidated under SFAS 166/167 exhibit the same risk relevance as assets that are not securitized, despite contractual provisions that would seem to imply substantial risk transfer.     

European firms’ corporate biodiversity disclosures and board gender diversity from 2002 to 2016

We examine how board gender diversity is associated with biodiversity disclosures of a firm, and whether the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and the EU biodiversity strategy reinforce this relationship. Using institutional theory and resource dependency theory, our sample comprises 4013 firm-year observations from European corporations covering data from 2002 to 2016. We use panel regressions with country, time and industry dummy variables to analyse the disclosure of biodiversity initiatives (DBI) and logit regressions to explain biodiversity impact assessment (BIA). We find that board gender diversity is positively associated with the DBI and BIA of a firm, and that the GRI framework and the EU biodiversity strategy positively moderate this relationship. Moreover, the GRI framework and the EU strategic plan show positive relationship with the DBI, rather than BIA. Altogether, our evidence suggests that corporate boards with a higher proportion of female directors are more sensitive to the concerns of institutional pressures and respond to those concerns by increasing corporate biodiversity disclosures. Overall, we find that firms tend to comply with the GRI framework and the EU 2020 strategy by undertaking symbolic biodiversity disclosures, rather than providing a comprehensive disclosure of their impacts on biodiversity.