Democratic Accountability During Performance Audits Under Pressure: A Recipe for Institutional Hypocrisy?

This study shows how the tensions between transparency and secrecy are likely to engender ‘institutional hypocrisy’ in the accountability process taking place during Supreme Audit Institutions’ performance audits. The examination of relations between the French Cour des comptes, Administration and Parliament has revealed gaps between Administration and Parliamentarians’ discourse and action, secrets and things left unsaid. This impression of Administration and Parliamentarians’ full participation in this democratic process may give to citizens a false sense of security leading them to believe that accounts are indeed rendered, which is not actually the case. Rather, the appearances of functional democracy have been preserved.     

A Real Effects Perspective to Accounting Measurement and Disclosure: Implications and Insights for Future Research

Accounting measurement and disclosure rules have a significant impact on the real decisions that firms make. In this essay, we provide an analytical framework to illustrate how such real effects arise. Using this framework, we examine three specific measurement issues that remain controversial: (1) How does the measurement of investments affect a firm's investment efficiency? (2) How does the measurement and disclosure of a firm's derivative transactions affect a firm's choice of intrinsic risk exposures, risk management strategy, and the incentive to speculate? (3) How could marking‐to‐market the asset portfolios of financial institutions generate procyclical real effects? We draw upon these real effects studies to generate sharper and novel insights that we believe are useful not only for the development of accounting standards, but also for guiding future empirical research.     

Public Information Precision and Coordination Failure: An Experiment

More precise public disclosure reduces uncertainty about economic fundamentals, but it can increase uncertainty about other agents' actions, leading to coordination failure. We conducted a laboratory experiment to study the effects of public information precision and strategic complementarity on coordination failure. Information precision is operationalized in terms of “granularity” (level of detail). We found that (1) granular public disclosure, which is disaggregated and precise, increases the likelihood of coordination failure and decreases coordination efficiency when public information is pessimistic about future economic prospects; (2) the deleterious effect of granular disclosure is stronger when strategic complementarity is high; and (3) higher levels of strategic complementarity decrease coordination efficiency. Overall, the observed likelihood of coordination failure is higher and coordination efficiency is lower than predicted by theory. Our findings have implications for the Federal Reserve's decision to publicly disclose detailed stress test results for distressed banks, and the debate on whether the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board should publicly release reports on firm‐specific quality‐control deficiencies of audit firms.     

中国上市公司现金股利中性监管的重新审视——基于现金股利不平稳动因的视角

本文从现金股利不平稳动因的视角,探究中国上市公司现金股利中性监管的必要性、有效性问题。通过A股上市公司数据,研究发现:分析师预测偏差、股票回报波动性正向显著影响上市公司现金股利不平稳程度,在非国有企业、现金流权与控制权分离程度较小的企业中上述影响更加明显,证监部门采取现金股利中性监管具有必要性;上市公司整体现金股利不平稳程度在2008年之后加剧,但满足"再融资资格条件"上市公司的信息透明度得到提升,现金股利不平稳程度得到了显著降低,现金股利中性监管具有一定的有效性。     

Transparency and trust: the case of the European Central Bank

We examine how the transparency of the European Central Bank’s monetary policy affects the amount of trust that the citizens of the European Union have in this institution. We use nearly half a million individual responses from the European Commission’s Eurobarometer survey from 2000 to 2011 and estimate probit regressions with sample selection. We find that transparency exerts a non-linear effect on trust. Transparency increases trust, but only up to a certain point; too much transparency harms trust. This result is robust to controlling for a number of macroeconomic conditions, financial stability transparency measures, and economic and socio-demographic characteristics of respondents, including examining respondents in European Union countries that do not use the euro and addressing clustering issues.     

Does Public Country-by-Country Reporting Deter Tax Avoidance and Income Shifting? Evidence from the European Banking Industry*

In this study, we examine the effect of increased tax transparency on the tax planning behavior of European banks. In 2014, the European Union introduced public country-by-country reporting requirements to the banking industry. Treating this new requirement as an exogenous shock, we find limited evidence consistent with a decline in income shifting by the banks' financial affiliates in the post-adoption period (starting from 2015). We do not, however, find robust evidence of a significant change in the consolidated book effective tax rates among the affected banks. Our findings suggest that increased transparency from public country-by-country reporting can deter tax-motivated income shifting but that it did not appear to materially influence the banks' overall tax avoidance. Our findings have policy implications for the ongoing debate between the European Parliament, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and accounting standard-setting bodies on whether to require multinationals to publish country-by-country reports.     

How sponsorship transparency mitigates negative effects of advertising recognition

The proliferation of covert online advertising formats such as advergames has raised concerns about consumers’ ability to recognize such content as advertising and about how recognition affects evaluative outcomes. The present research utilized an online experiment (N?=?179) to examine differences between covertness of advertising format (advergame vs. online video commercials) on advertising recognition, and whether sponsorship transparency mediates – and mitigates – the negative effects of advertising recognition on attitude toward the ad, attitude toward the brand, and purchase intent. The results show that covertness of advertising format, recognition, and sponsorship transparency all shape consumers’ responses to online ads. Specifically, the predicted negative indirect effect of covertness of advertising format on attitudes and behavioral intention via advertising recognition reversed valance when sponsorship transparency was included in the serial mediation model.     

Implementation of accrual accounting in Thailand’s central government

This paper evaluates the outcomes of accrual accounting implementation in Thailand’s central government. A new conceptual framework was used to study transition barriers and their effects. Financial transparency and accountability were shown to have improved. Significant barriers to the transition to accrual accounting include a lack of incentives, a management culture, a lack of accounting manuals, and a failure to understand accrual information.

IMPACT

This paper explains the transition barriers Thailand has faced in adopting accrual accounting in its central government and how these barriers are affecting financial reporting in the public sector. The results in this paper can be applied to other countries in terms of evaluating outcomes or planning transition processes.     

Transparency of the organization and activity of carbon funds

ABSTRACT

Public and mixed carbon funds buy carbon credits on behalf of public authorities and make use of public money, thus there is a need for clear information regarding their operations. The paper presents a new transparency index for the organization and activity of carbon funds that takes account of information disclosed via the internet. The construction of the index is based on the Linaburg-Maduell Transparency Index for sovereign wealth funds. The empirical study demonstrates that public and mixed carbon funds varied significantly in terms of their transparency but, in general, mixed carbon funds performed slightly better than public carbon funds.