Information disclosure and liquidity crisis

We analyze a model in which a firm’s manager privately learns about the expected return on the firm’s project and strategically discloses it to investors (i.e., discretionary disclosure). Based on the manager’s disclosure, investors decide whether to withdraw their investments from the firm. Our analysis indicates that investors’ optimistic prior beliefs in the firm reduce the possibility of their withdrawals and the manager’s incentive of discretionary disclosure, whereas pessimistic beliefs increase them. We further examine the effects of a commitment to reporting of bad news, namely, the conservative disclosure rule. This rule always suppresses the manager’s incentive of discretionary disclosure; however, it increases (reduces) investors’ withdrawals when they are optimistic (pessimistic) about the firm’s project.     

This time truly is different: The cyclical behaviour of fiscal policy during the Covid-19 crisis

Fiscal policy was more countercyclical during the Covid-19 crisis than in previous (crisis) episodes. This paper presents empirical evidence in favour of a “this time truly is different” moment based on analysing the cyclical behaviour of fiscal policy for 28 advanced economies over 1995–2021. Discretionary fiscal policy during the Covid-19 crisis (2020–2021) did more to counteract the downturn – especially in the Eurozone –, as we do not find comparable evidence for countercyclicality during the financial crisis or Euro crisis. Automatic fiscal stabilisers, the non-discretionary domain of fiscal policy, significantly contributed to countercyclical stabilisation during the pandemic.     

会计师事务所外部治理效用探究——基于创业板上市公司IPO审计的面板数据分析

基于2009--2012年257家创业板上市公司的432个IPO审计样本，检验审计质量与企业长期资本市场回报、投资回报率的关系，实证结果表明：应计利润和审计收费显著地表明了审计质量的高低，同时有微弱证据表明行业专长代表了较高的审计质量；事务所声誉与企业经营业绩呈正相关，但是与企业长期资本市场回报呈现显著负相关，该结果源于中国资本市场的非效率性。总体上说，会计师事务所在IPO审计市场上起到了一定的外部治理效用，但仍然有待加强。     

大股东掏空与盈余管理关系研究——基于掏空效应引入盈余管理模型视角

大股东与中小股东的利益冲突是现代企业发展过程中广泛存在的重要问题。本文基于委托代理问题与大股东掏空路径,选取2012－2019年A股上市公司数据,将大股东掏空效应引入Kothari et al.（2005）修正的Jones模型,计算应计盈余时剔除关联交易行为与资金占用的影响,比较剔除前后可操纵利润的差异,对大股东掏空与盈余管理的关系进行实证研究。鉴于大股东掏空本身对盈余管理模型计算有影响,本文的做法可以形象反映掏空对盈余管理的影响路径,即大股东通过实现关联交易和资金占用,导致可操纵应计利润减少,企业会通过其他手段进行盈余管理。另外,还考虑不同产权性质的影响,结果发现国企相对于非国企来说,以掩盖大股东掏空为动机进行应计盈余管理的动机更强。     

Brexit disclosure – companies’ honest or bogus perceptions of risk?

Motivated by the recent FRC Brexit-risk reporting guidance, we investigate empirically how internationally diversified companies and those operating in industries with high/low exposure voluntarily responded to this. The paper also examines the pessimistic tone of risk disclosure in annual reports by employing Loughran and McDonald (2011)’s business dictionary capable of gauging various attributes of uncertainty. We find that while almost all FTSE 100 companies discuss this topic in their 2016 to 2019 annual reports, more international involvement results in a greater amount of information and fewer Brexit risk factors. This suggests that while internationally diversified companies respond to more pressure from regulatory requirements, they have already taken internal measures to minimize their exposure to Brexit and therefore, have downgraded their assessment of Brexit risks and uncertainties, and report it to investors accordingly. The results hold true regardless of the location of risk disclosures in the Strategic report and Financial Statements and notes. We also reveal evidence that there are some differential effects among industries depending on the exposure to the Brexit shock. Finally, our results show that internationalisation and industry exposure explain some variation in the negative tone of Brexit discussions. The increased risk reporting and negative tone may be driven by either an intentional bias or justifiably, by a lack of managerial information endowment (Dobler, 2008).     

内部控制缺陷披露如何影响资本市场应计异象？

基于应计异象视角，利用2012—2020年A股上市公司数据，深入研究内部控制缺陷披露对会计信息定价效率的影响。结果表明，内部控制缺陷披露能够显著缓解A股市场应计异象。进一步分解应计盈余发现，内部控制缺陷披露缓解了投资增长导致的应计异象，对盈余管理导致的应计异象加剧作用不显著，整体表现为缓解作用。机制检验发现，内部控制缺陷披露的监督治理效应发挥了主要作用，提高了治理水平，缓解了应计异象，高行业内部控制缺陷披露削弱了其缓解作用，内控监管环境的严格强化了两者的关系，缺陷整改信息披露未能引起两者关系的变化。     

Do foreign institutional investors monitor opportunistic managerial behaviour? Evidence from real earnings management

Employing a large sample of 13,860 firms in 41 economies from 2000 to 2017, we document that the ownership by foreign institutional investors (FIIs) is negatively associated with firms' real earnings management (REM) but unrelated to their accrual earnings management (AEM). We adopt a few identification strategies to tackle the endogeneity issues, including firm- and year-fixed effects regression, two-stage least squares (2SLS) regression, and difference-in-differences (DiD) estimation based on the passage of the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act (JGTRRA). In addition, we show that the role of FIIs in curbing REM is achieved through the expertise channel and the monitoring channel. These results suggest that when facing disadvantages in curbing AEM, FIIs make the most of their monitoring strengths by curbing firms' REM, where they have both incentives and capabilities to monitor. Overall, this study highlights the important role of FIIs in monitoring opportunistic managerial behaviour.