How and why auditors’ social exchange relationships influence their attitudes and behaviors: Implications for audit quality

External auditors regularly interact with various parties at work, such as their accounting firms, engagement team members, and clients. These interactions can help shape the nature of auditors’ social exchange relationships with these entities, which in turn may influence their behavior toward these targets. This installment of Accounting Matters draws from recently published research by Herda and colleagues to (1) explain how constructive auditor-target connections can develop and lead to beneficial outcomes like reduced auditor burnout and turnover intentions, as well as more citizenship behavior, and (2) discuss how these upshots might ultimately affect audit quality. This topic is important because audit quality translates into improved financial reporting, which helps stakeholders who rely on audited financial statements to make informed business decisions. Specifically, we underscore the key role auditors’ perceptions of fair treatment from a relationship partner play in fostering a strong psychological bond with the target via perceived support. We further consider how auditors’ consequent commitment to the target can result in favorable organizational outcomes, including enhanced audit and financial reporting quality. We also discuss practical implications for accounting firms.     

基于动态因子Copula模型的我国银行系统性风险度量

本文基于2007年至2019年我国14家上市银行的股票收益率,构建偏态t-分布动态因子Copula模型,利用时变荷载因子刻画单家银行与整个系统的相关性,计算联合风险概率作为系统性风险整体水平的度量,基于关联性视角提出了新的单家机构系统脆弱性和系统重要性度量指标——系统脆弱性程度和系统重要性程度。该方法充分考虑了银行个体差异性和系统的内在关联性以及收益率的厚尾性和非对称性,从而能够捕捉到更多的信息且兼具时效性。研究表明:银行机构在风险聚集时期相关程度更大,联合风险概率能够准确识别出系统性风险事件且在我国推行宏观审慎评估体系以后有明显降低;整体而言,大型商业银行系统重要性水平最高,同时风险抗压能力也最强;本文使用的度量方法降低了数据获取成本且更具时效性,有助于为宏观审慎差异化监管工作提供借鉴和参考。     

Recognition in India’s new service professions: gym trainers and coffee baristas

ABSTRACT

How do employees in “new services”, such as coffee baristas and gym trainers in India, see their jobs? In this paper, we build on extensive fieldwork in gyms and coffee chains that cater to the emerging Indian middle classes. Our research highlights the importance of respect and recognition in making service interactions more meaningful for new service workers. Generally hailing from the lower middle classes, new service work offers important opportunities to interact with and learn from English-speaking upper middle-class customers and clients. Besides the opportunity to interact and learn, the acknowledgement they receive for their skills and (bodily) accomplishments make such professions attractive as well. Even if this holds the potential for upward socioeconomic mobility, our findings also point at the resilience of social hierarchies. Drawing on literature on service interactions and new middle-class formation in India, this paper provides important insight into how young Indians navigate and negotiate the opportunities and pitfalls that come with the country's changing socioeconomic landscape.     

农业减量化：农户经营的规模逻辑及其证据

本文将农户分为五种类型,并将农地规模分解为地块规模、经营规模与连片规模,由此构建“农户类型—规模形式—减量化行为”的分析框架,进而阐明农户减量化的规模逻辑。基于农户问卷的实证分析表明:①对于所有样本农户来说,地块规模越大,减施量越高。其中,追求产量最大化的生产型小农,减施量与经营规模呈“倒U”型变化,而追求多元化经营的功能型小农,减施量随经营规模的扩大而增加;②农户连片规模扩大,减施量就增高,并且能够增强地块规模扩大以及经营规模扩大对减施的促进作用;③农户社会服务卷入程度加深,能够增强地块规模、经营规模和连片规模扩大对减施的促进作用。据此,农业减量化,应鼓励农户开展连片种植,形成生产性服务的市场容量,然后诱导服务供应商提供专业化服务,进而实现服务规模经营对农地规模经营的替代。     

Banding together in a festival context: Examining effects of a joint-stakeholder external service recovery

Despite substantial growth in revenue and attendance numbers on a global and country level over the past decades, failure is still a fairly common phenomenon in the events/festival industry. Drawing on two scenario studies and data collected in the United States, this research investigated the impact on festival-goers’ evaluations and behavior of joint-stakeholder external service recoveries, in contrast to the prevalent focus on examining service recoveries by a single stakeholder that caused the failure. Findings revealed that festival-goers had different perceptions of and behavioral intentions towards the various stakeholders depending on their perception of fault for the failure. Yet, rather than a predicted joint effect with failure severity, we found a significant interaction effect of the locus of causality with service recovery measures, either via an internal or external recovery. Implications of study findings and directions for future research are discussed.     

Optimal targeting of latent tourism demand segments

This paper identifies for the first time the optimal target markets employing the latent tourism demand expenditure, a novel concept in tourism literature. The study quantifies latent tourism demand between each pair of origin-destination through distinguishing by type of tourism and seasonality. It works with market shares that are estimated via a fractional regression model. Moreover, latent demand is clustered using a market segmentation approach based on a latent class regression. Finally, the optimal target markets are chosen depending on the expected latent tourism expenditure. The result has clear policy implications in terms of which markets are promoted, the optimal channels of communication and the maximum budget for each marketing campaign.     

Incorporating active adjustment into a financing based model of capital structure

The conventional partial adjustment model, which focuses on leverage evolution, has difficulty identifying deliberate capital structure adjustments as it confounds financing decisions with the mechanical autocorrelation of leverage. We propose and estimate a financing-based partial adjustment model that separates the effects of financing decisions on leverage evolution from mechanical evolution. The speed of adjustment (SOA) is firm-specific and stochastic, and active targeting of capital structure has a multiplier effect that depends on the size of financial deficit. Overall, we find expected SOA from active rebalancing (30%) more than doubles what is expected from mechanical mean reversion alone (13%).     

Deal characteristics and M&A performance: How do hospitality firms fare?

The global hospitality industry has experienced significant consolidation in the past several decades. While evidence in the general business literature suggests that the target firm shareholders gain instead of the acquiring firm shareholders, some studies in the hospitality industry have suggested that mergers and acquisitions (M&As) are also beneficial to acquiring firms. Using a comparative study design and a comprehensive sample over 41 years, we empirically examine whether M&As create more value in the hospitality industry than in other industries and whether certain deal characteristics may explain the potential performance differential. Overall, we find that M&As in the hospitality industry outperform M&As in non-hospitality sectors. When examining deal attributes, we find that relative size of target, cash method of payment, and an unlisted target are characteristics positively related to merger performance and help explain some of the performance differential. We contribute theoretically and empirically to the literature by demonstrating that industry and deal effects play an important role in M&A performance.     

Seemingly inconsistent analyst revisions

In about 20%–30% of cases where an analyst revises two outputs (namely, earnings estimates, target prices, or stock recommendations) simultaneously, the two estimates are revised in opposite directions. Existing literature notes that these inconsistent outputs are widespread, and concludes that they are lower-quality, driven by strategic bias, and are viewed as less valid by investors. We find that these characterizations are generally inaccurate. Apparent inconsistency is largely driven by accounting and economic factors, with only limited evidence that investment banking-related conflicts play a role. Moreover, inconsistent outputs are neither less accurate than consistent outputs nor do they resolve less investor uncertainty upon their release. Overall, our results suggest that researchers should be cautious in interpreting the correlation between analyst outputs as a measure of bias or quality, and in using a single analyst output as a proxy for an analyst's overall views.     

基于研究联合体的国家自主创新示范区企业转型升级评价——2016-2020年1 827家上市公司的实证分析

作为引领区域创新发展的前沿阵地,国家自主创新示范区企业必须率先实现高质量转型升级,以支撑示范区充分发挥其创新引领和辐射带动作用。基于扎根理论,对11个典型案例进行研究,得到具体影响因素,在此基础上构建研究联合体视角下国家自主创新示范区企业转型升级评价指标体系,并运用AHP-熵权组合赋权模型对2016-2020年中国1827家A股制造企业进行实证研究。结果发现：示范区企业转型升级综合指数整体较低,企业转型升级水平具有较大提升空间;东中西部示范区企业转型升级水平存在较大差距且呈现扩大趋势;南北部示范区企业转型升级不存在显著差异,制造业为主的南部示范区企业转型升级水平较高;示范区企业转型升级受研发创新协同的影响较大,后者是示范区企业转型升级的主要影响因素。鉴于此,国家层面应健全以政府为主导的示范区企业支持政策体系;示范区层面应积极落实国家重大区域发展战略,以培育高精尖人才科研团队、搭建智能化研究联合体为发力点;企业层面以示范区企业研究联合体作为新引擎,聚焦示范区企业核心技术难题,促进示范区企业高质量创新发展。