A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR CORPORATE RISK DISCLOSURE EMERGING FROM THE AGENDA FOR CORPORATE GOVERNANCE REFORM

During the last decade an implicit conceptual framework for internal control and corporate risk management has arisen from risk management practice and policy within UK companies. An explicit conceptual framework for risk management is now emerging and is expressed in the Turnbull Report. In this paper, we develop a diagrammatic representation for the conceptual framework for internal control, risk management and risk disclosure. We consider the recent practical and policy developments in the disclosure of risk-related information in order to establish the current state of the art of corporate risk disclosure. Thus, we focus only on the disclosure aspect of the conceptual framework for internal control. We use a questionnaire survey to canvas the attitudes of UK institutional investors towards risk disclosure in relation to their portfolio investment decisions. Our empirical findings indicate that institutional investors do not generally favour a regulated environment for corporate risk disclosure or a general statement of business risk. The respondents agree that increased risk disclosure would help them in their portfolio investment decisions. However, for other aspects of the risk disclosure issue they are more neutral in attitude. Further, we found that the variation in the attitudes of institutional investors appears to be associated with the characteristics of the funds they manage as well as with their investment horizons. Further, we find that institutional investors’ perceptions of corporate governance are related to their investment horizons, among other factors.     

内部控制缺陷信息披露对个人投资者风险认知的影响:一项实验研究

研究个人投资者对内部控制信息披露的反应机理具有重要的与内部控制披露管制相关的政策含义。本文运用实验研究方法,研究了内部控制缺陷信息披露对个人投资者风险认知的影响。研究发现,内部控制缺陷的严重程度对个人投资者的风险认知具有显著影响,但投资者对不披露任何缺陷与披露重要缺陷并没有进行差异化的风险认知反应;管理层对内部控制缺陷的描述程度对个人投资者的风险认知无显著影响。本文研究还发现,对管理者的信任是内部控制缺陷对个人投资者风险认知影响的一个重要中介变量;注册会计师的内部控制审计报告对个人投资者风险认知具有显著影响,在披露内部控制缺陷的情况下,对内部控制审计报告的使用程度越高,越能强化内部控制缺陷对个人投资者风险认知的消极影响。     

中国企业ERP投资关键信息披露问题研究

近年来,我国企业ERP投资增长迅速。然而,ERP系统实施在给企业带来诸多好处的同时,也由于其复杂性而可能给企业带来巨大的投资风险。对于这项复杂的系统工程,如果其相关关键信息披露不透明、不可比,导致的信息不对称问题将大大增加企业投资者的决策风险。本文研究了我国上市公司ERP投资相关关键信息披露的现状,通过实证研究的方法分析了企业ERP投资普遍采取的披露内容和方式存在的问题,并就此对证监会信息披露准则的修订提出建议。     

The nature and determinants of disclosure practices in the insurance industry: Evidence from European insurers

Filling a gap in the existing literature on disclosure practices by insurance companies, this research provides new empirical evidence on the nature and determinants of disclosure practices in the European insurance industry over the 2005–2010 period. The main results show that insurers are more inclined to invest in the quantity of risk information rather than in the disclosure quality of the entire annual report, as risk information is addressed to high-level financially educated people and requires fewer resources than are needed for an investment in quality. Further, the analysis also shows that insurer level characteristics, in terms of size and technical provisions, as well as country level variables, significantly affect the amount of risk information disclosed. In the years affected by the financial crisis, the level of risk disclosure quantity increases as insurers use disclosure as a tool to reassure stakeholders on their independence from the global financial crisis.     

金融风险的信息质量特征与我国金融会计制度改革

本文着眼于巴塞尔新资本协议第三次征求意见稿提出的金融风险监管和信息披露框架,以我国金融会计制度的国际化协调为切入点,分析了信用风险、市场风险和操作风险等金融风险的构成要素,指出现有监管信息系统和会计体系存在的问题.同时,本文还评价了我国新<金融企业会计制度>等规范对金融风险的披露和监管特征,分析了新制度对银行类上市公司所产生的影响,并提出了建立以风险计量会计披露为核心的监管体系的构想.本文最后对协同新巴塞尔协议的监管原则,建立完整的银行业信息披露框架,形成动态信息披露机制提出了一些建议.     

Mandatory information disclosure and innovation: Evidence from the disclosure of operational information

We use a quasi-natural experiment wherein the Shanghai Stock Exchange requires listed companies in certain industries to disclose operational information and a staggered difference-in-differences model to examine the impact of mandatory information disclosure on corporate innovation. We find that companies subject to mandatory operational information disclosure show significantly increased innovation. This effect is pronounced for companies classified as non-state-owned enterprises, facing severe financing constraints and a high degree of shareholder tunneling behavior and in competitive and high-tech industries. Although mandatory operational information disclosure reduces their competitive advantage, companies appear to compensate by increasing innovation. Our study highlights the positive impact of mandatory operational information disclosure, indicating that it contributes to the high-quality development of both capital markets and companies.     

Does SEC FRR No. 48 disclosure communicate risk management effectiveness?

We hypothesize that the quality of market risk disclosure mandated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Financial Reporting Release No. 48 (FRR No. 48) provides useful information for assessing risk management effectiveness. Measuring risk disclosure quality as the degree of modification, we find that higher-than-expected disclosure modification is associated with lower future cash flow volatility. On average, an increase in risk disclosure modification from the lowest to the highest decile is associated with a 5.34 percent decrease in cash flow volatility. Given the significant impact of cash flow volatility on firm value and capital investment, our results highlight the importance of market risk disclosures and should be of interest to investors and analysts.     

The interaction of incentives and information disclosure: the case of confidence interval information

Reliable risk assessment is critical for success in decision-making, but our assessment of risk is often hindered by inherent biases and limitations in our information processing capacities. Consequently, many have presumed that the disclosure of probabilistic or confidence interval (CI) information would aid our judgment of the uncertainty of an estimate. Empirical support for CI information disclosure, however, is generally lacking. Since human beings are goal-directed, the effectiveness of CI information disclosure may be contingent upon the motivation of an individual. This study, through a computer-based laboratory experiment, examines whether the effectiveness of CI information disclosure in an investment choice task setting is contingent upon the availability of performance-based monetary incentives. The results indicate that the disclosure of CI information can enhance or harm decision performance contingent upon the incentive condition: incentives are vital for realizing benefits from the disclosure of CI information. The implications of the findings are discussed.     

Disclosure Quality and the Excess Value of Diversification

For a sample of U.S. firm years from 1980 through 1996 we document a positive association between the excess value of diversification as defined by Berger and Ofek [1995] and security analyst ratings of voluntary disclosure as developed by the Association for Investment Management and Research. We also examine an alternative proxy for disclosure quality that captures the degree of segment disaggregation and document a positive association between this measure and excess value. Our results are robust to controls for firm performance and information environment. Taken together, these phenomena suggest that disclosure plays a monitoring role in disciplining management's investment decisions. However, tests of the association between disclosure and the value of firms' investment spending yield mixed results.     

The effects of disclosing critical audit matters and auditor tenure on nonprofessional investors’ judgments

In an effort to provide more meaningful information to financial statement users, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) recently adopted sweeping changes to the audit report, requiring the audit firm to disclose whether or not it identified a critical audit matter (CAM) and its tenure with the client. To our knowledge, ours is the first study to explore how nonprofessional investors’ judgments are influenced by (1) the relative effects of a CAM disclosure versus a disclosure that the auditor did not identify a CAM, and (2) the disclosure of the audit firm’s tenure. We find that, relative to disclosing that no CAMs were identified, disclosing a CAM reduces investment intentions. We do not find a significant effect of tenure disclosure on investment intentions, despite evidence that participants attended to and understood the tenure manipulation. Concerning investors’ cognitive processes, we find that perceptions of both risk of material misstatement and management disclosure credibility mediate the effect of CAM disclosure on investment intentions, while perceived audit quality suppresses this effect. Our contributions include furthering the understanding of cognitive mechanisms through which CAM disclosure influences investment intentions, identifying a relatively unique setting in which perceptions of management disclosure credibility and audit quality move in opposite directions, and providing evidence that auditor tenure disclosure does not appear to affect investment intentions. Our findings should be of interest to regulators, auditors, issuers, and investors.     

信息披露、信息中介与企业过度投资

本文基于中国上市公司的经验数据,对信息披露、信息中介与企业过度投资之间的关系进行了探索,研究结果表明:信息披露水平提高和信息中介的发展,将减轻信息不对称程度,进而提高了企业的投资效率,抑制过度投资行为。本文还发现上述机制之间存在互补关系,信息中介作用的发挥依赖于信息披露机制,而更多的信息中介参与营造了较好的信息传播环境,增强了信息披露机制的抑制效果。     

Flying under the radar: The effects of short-sale disclosure rules on investor behavior and stock prices

We study how disclosure requirements for large short positions affect investor behavior and security prices. Short positions accumulate just below the applicable disclosure threshold as certain investors never disclose any of their positions. Further tests suggest that this secrecy is part of investors’ general policy of avoiding disclosure to protect their unique, profitable investment strategies against reverse engineering by competitors. No evidence supports the notion that short sellers avoid disclosure because of potential adverse effects on securities' lending fees, risk of recall, or short squeezes. Finally, the evasive behavior by short sellers in response to transparency regulations hampers price discovery.     

系统性风险转移、金融危机与公允价值披露

金融创新过程中系统性风险的转移突破了证券投资中收益与风险的传统对应关系,使衍生工具成为一种能有效规避系统性风险的投资载体。公允价值按市值计价的会计处理方法存在着一定的不足,即反映收益的同时忽视了对风险的应有监督;而同时披露收益的相关性和风险的相关性这两方面的信息是提升公允价值信息决策有用性的重要一环。这就需要从披露的视角研究公允价值的具体应用,探讨公允价值披露的改进。     

国际银行业信息披露制度研究

信息披露制度的兴起和完善伴随着商业银行治理结构的变革及风险管理技术的提升,是推动银行业公司治理改革的重要动力。《有效银行监管的核心原则》、《提高银行透明度》、《巴塞尔资本协议Ⅱ》等报告和协议为国际银行业信息披露标准提供了借鉴,折射了国际银行业信息披露制度的变革方向。美国银行业信息披露制度对我国有着明显的借鉴意义,其改进信息披露的举措主要包括提高信息披露效能、加强信用风险披露和按业务线披露经营信息等。以《巴塞尔资本协议Ⅱ》的要求为基础,借鉴发达国家的信息披露制度,细化《商业银行信息披露暂行办法》的相关规定,推进信息披露的规范化,是我国商业银行提升信息披露水平的可选思路。     

Voluntary Disclosure,Manipulation, and Real Effects

We study a model in which managers’ disclosure and investment decisions are both endogenous and managers can manipulate their voluntary reports through (suboptimal) investment, financing, or operating decisions. Managers are privately informed about the value of their firm and have incentives to voluntarily disclose information and manipulate their reports in order to obtain more favorable terms when issuing equity to finance a new profitable investment opportunity. The model shows that treating managers’ disclosure and investment decisions both as endogenous and allowing managers to manipulate their voluntary reports yields qualitatively different predictions from when the disclosure and investment decisions are considered separately and managers cannot engage in manipulation. The model predicts that managers’ disclosure strategy is sometimes characterized by two distinct nondisclosure intervals (contrary to traditional threshold equilibria of voluntary disclosure models) and that managers with intermediate news sometimes forego the new profitable investment opportunity. As such, the paper highlights the importance of considering the interdependencies between firms’ disclosure and investment decisions and provides new empirical predictions.     

Disclosure of liquidity and cash flow statements by Australian superannuation funds before Covid-19

The Commonwealth's stimulus package required the unexpected distribution of cash by superannuation funds to members during the Covid-19 pandemic. We focus on disclosure and maintenance of an operational risk financial reserve and reporting of the statement of cash flows in annual reports by Australian superannuation funds. These disclosures represent mandated sources of information providing evidence of liquidity levels for meeting cash payouts and disclosure adherence. Many funds did not meet their statutory reporting requirements. More members and higher union board membership as measures of stakeholder power explain higher disclosure in support of managerial stakeholder theory.     

注册制改革会产生溢出效应吗?——基于企业投资行为的视角北大核心

提高资本市场资源配置效率是注册制推行的重要目标之一,本文以此为出发点,构建了多期倍分法(DID)模型,探究了科创板(试点注册制)公司信息披露对同行业公司的溢出效应。研究发现,科创板公司信息披露会促使同行业公司提高研发投入,且该效应随着信息披露内容的丰富、精确度的增加而有所提高。机制分析表明,该溢出效应源自信息不确定性的降低和竞争压力的产生。同时,创板信息披露提高了同行业公司管理层对创新的认知程度以及增加了媒体关注度,进而促进公司研发投入。进一步研究发现,同行业公司研发投入受到正向溢出效应影响的同时,固定资产投入有所降低,投资结构的改变最终导致投资效率提升,显著抑制了过度投资。本文为强制性信息披露的溢出效应研究提供了因果证据,也为注册制改革政策效果的全面评估提供了支持。     

An analysis of proxy statement leadership structure justification disclosures

The Dodd-Frank Act’s qualitative disclosure requirements have prompted a call in the accounting literature for greater qualitative disclosure scrutiny. In this paper, we investigate the informativeness of qualitative leadership justification disclosures required by Section 972 of the Dodd-Frank Act. The disclosures are divided between justifying combining the CEO and Chairman of the Board (CEO Duality) and splitting these two positions (split structure). We use content analysis in our investigation. We discover that the two types of justifications are very different. The split structure disclosures tend to be ‘boiler plate’ and lack informativeness. In contrast, our tests suggest that CEO Duality justifications are informative. Our tests suggest that disclosures’ intensities in CEO Duality firms are positively associated with an increasing volume of information that supports CEO Duality as the more appropriate leadership structure choice. Additionally, our test results show that leadership disclosures change users risk perception, but only for CEO Duality firms. This suggests that investors believe in and are using the disclosures when making their investment decisions.     

环保背景下制造业上市公司投资效率分析——来自京津冀地区的数据

以2011~2012年在国内 A 股市场上市的130家京津冀地区现代制造业上市公司为样本,通过Richardson 模型对样本投资效率进行评分,并用内容分析法对企业环境信息披露程度评分,以此研究京津冀地区现代制造业上市公司环境信息披露对企业投资效率的影响。研究结果显示：环境信息披露程度评分与公司投资效率评分存在正相关关系,但相关系数较低,这表明企业环境信息披露行为对企业投资效率影响较小,且不会使得企业投资效率降低。     

Information asymmetry around operational risk announcements

Operational risk incidences are likely to increase the degree of information asymmetry between firms and investors. We analyze operational risk disclosures by US financial firms during 1995–2009 and their impact on different measures of information asymmetry in the firms’ equity markets. Effective spreads and the price impact of trades are shown to increase around the first announcements of such events and to revert after the announcement of their settlement. This is especially pronounced for internal fraud and business practices related events. Market makers respond to higher information risk around the first press cutting date by increasing the quoted depth to accommodate an increase in trading volumes.The degree of information asymmetry around operational risk events may be influenced by the bank’s risk management function and the bank’s governance structure. We indeed find that information asymmetry increases more strongly after events’ first announcements when firms have weaker governance structures—lower board independence ratios, lower equity incentives of executive directors, and lower levels of institutional ownership. In contrast, the firms’ risk management function has little to no impact on information asymmetry. We interpret this as evidence that the risk management function is primarily driven by regulatory compliance needs. The results of this study contribute to our understanding of information asymmetry around operational risk announcements. They help to shed light on the role that regulation and corporate governance can play in order to establish effective disclosure practices and to promote a liquid and transparent securities market.