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.     

Determinants of China's bilateral trade balance in global value chains

This paper identifies the determinants of China's bilateral trade balance using a new measure based on international input–output data, the so-called ‘trade in value-added’ (TiVA), which can prevent double counting in the estimation of bilateral trade balance. Our results show that using a measure based on gross exports, rather than TiVA, causes relatively large overestimation of the impact of the RMB exchange rate on China's bilateral trade balance. This overestimation is mainly because that the increasing production of exports may require increasing intermediate imports as a consequence of international fragmentation of production in global value chains. In addition, our results also show that the impact of FDI inflows on China's bilateral trade balances depends on the position and role of China and its trading partners in GVCs.     

Export intensity of foreign subsidiaries of multinational enterprises: The role of trade finance availability

We examine the relationship between the role of trade finance availability and the export intensity of foreign subsidiaries of multinational enterprises (MNEs). In developing our hypotheses, we draw upon insights derived from “new” internalisation theory (international business literature) and international trade finance (international economics literature). We empirically test these hypotheses using survey data compiled from subsidiary managers in six ASEAN countries, supplemented with host-country level data. We conceptualise, empirically test, and establish that the subsidiary-level capability in combining and utilising internal and external debts is an important subsidiary-specific advantage to support export intensity. We find that subsidiaries employ intra-firm loans from MNE internal capital markets and, to some extent, bank loans from external financial institutions to boost their export intensity. Subsidiaries may have concerns about foreign exchange risks, but the use of appropriate foreign exchange risk management is positively associated with export intensity. We discuss the implications of our findings for theory and practice.     

High-Frequency Trading,Liquidity Withdrawal,and the Breakdown of Conventions in Foreign Exchange Markets

Conventions, or “that the existing state of affairs will continue indefinitely, except in so far as we have specific reasons to expect a change” (Keynes 1936), play a central role in over-the-counter markets. For instance, by allowing expectations about the future to become more harmonized and orderly, they act as stabilizers for the provision of liquidity. Conventions might, of course, change at any time. Nonetheless, by being attached to the daily trading routine and/or integrated within the institutional structure, the confidence in their relevance and validity can be long-lasting. In the foreign exchange market, in particular, where prices are quoted to end-users on demand, market-making banks rely on a convention to quote prices to each other to maintain liquidity. However, the rise of algorithmic and high-frequency trading poses a practical as well as a theoretical challenge to such conventions. By reacting ultra-fast to new information, including to new limit orders submitted by others, markets largely populated with algorithmic traders have become susceptible to a withdrawal of liquidity at an unprecedented speed and scale. Using a high-frequency dataset provided by Electronic Broking Services (EBS), we investigate the process of liquidity withdrawal from the foreign exchange spot market. By doing so, we consider the crowding out of conventions associated with liquidity provision, traditionally upheld through mutual understanding among financial institutions – in other words, reciprocity and trust among humans.     

An Empirical Assessment of the Swedish Bullionist Controversy*

In the 18th century, a fierce political debate broke out in Sweden about the causes of an extraordinary depreciation of the currency. More specifically, the deteriorating value of the Swedish currency was blamed arbitrarily on monetary causes (e.g., the overissuing of banknotes) and on non-monetary causes (such as balance-of-payments deficits). This paper provides a comprehensive empirical assessment of this so-called “Swedish Bullionist Controversy”. The results of vector autoregressions suggest that increasing amounts of paper money did give rise to inflation and a depreciation of the exchange rate. Conversely, non-monetary factors were probably less important for these developments.     

Death spiral PIPEs: a reconsideration of the evidence

We challenge the view that PIPEs lead to unfavourable outcomes for issuing firms. We show that structured PIPEs do not have significant negative CARs when a matched firm benchmark is used for computing CARs and when sample selection bias is taken into account. Indeed, structured PIPEs have significantly higher positive skewness, indicating superior optionality, consistent with the real option argument. We also show that the 2002 intervention by the Securities and Exchange Corporation (SEC) has led to unintended consequences, with the substitution of ‘mom and pop’ investors for hedge fund investors in the structured PIPE market.     

中国木质家具出口贸易与汇率波动关系研究

木质家具是我国最重要的出口林产品之一。人民币汇率改革后,人民币总体呈升值趋势,这一趋势提高了国产木质家具的出口价格,会产生阻碍出口的作用;与此同时其也会使进口原材料价格相对降低、促进原材料的进口,二者相互作用会共同影响木质家具出口额。通过建立回归模型,研究人民币汇率波动对中国木质家具出口贸易额的影响,结果表明人民币汇率与中国木质家具出口额呈负相关,但是通过人民币贬值来促进出口的策略并不明智。     

Extreme risk spillovers between crude palm oil prices and exchange rates

This study is the first attempt to examine the extreme risk spillovers between Malaysian crude palm oil (CPO) and foreign exchange currencies of the three largest CPO importers: India, the European Union and China throughout the global financial crisis. Using daily data of three currencies, CPO spot and futures from 2000 to 2018, our results show: First, before the crisis, the unexpected change in foreign exchange rates is the primary driver of risk spillover to the CPO market. Second, during the crisis, the extreme movement of CPO spot returns is dominant in the Malaysian exchange rates relative to the euro. Third, after the crisis, the spillover flows from the CPO market to the foreign exchange market. Overall, our findings show the importance of CPO pricing dynamics in mitigating foreign exchange risk over the crisis period. This paper contributes to the extant literature by recognizing the effect of risk spillover on the targeted foreign exchange rate for portfolio allocation.     

Testing the asymmetric effects of exchange rate pass‐through in BRICS countries: Does the state of the economy matter?

This paper investigates not only the question of whether there is exchange rate pass‐through (ERPT) but also the extent to which the pass‐through is asymmetric or state‐dependent in the BRICS countries. Using monthly data from 1999:M1 to 2019:M12 and non‐linear smooth transition vector autoregressive (STVAR) model, our results provide evidence of period‐specific ERPT between the upper and lower regime periods, governed by the selected transition variables. The results further suggest that the pass‐through of exchange rate is higher when the economy is experiencing large appreciations and expansions as well as large depreciations and recessions. Theimplication for these findings is that ERPT is strongly affected by the state of the economy.     

The impact of real exchange rate shocks on manufacturing workers: An autopsy from the MORG

We study the impact of large real exchange rate shocks on workers in sectors initially more exposed to international trade using the Current Population Survey’s (CPS) Merged Outgoing Rotation Group (MORG) from 1979 to 2010 combined with new annual measures of imported inputs, a proxy for offshoring. We find that in periods when US relative prices are high, and imports surge relative to exports, workers in sectors with greater initial exposure to international trade were more likely to be unemployed or exit the labor force a year later, but did not experience significant declines in wages conditional on being employed. Contrary to the usual narrative, we find negative wage effects for higher-wage, but not lower-wage workers, particularly for those who are less-educated.