会计稳健性对投资效率的作用机理研究——基于企业并购的研究视角

在剩余收益估值模型的基础上构造了 Basu (1997)的反函数,从而构建了可同时度量非条件稳健性和条件稳健性的实证模型,并基于企业并购的视角,探究了会计稳健性对企业投资效率的事前和事后影响。研究发现：非条件稳健性可以提升企业事前投资效率(降低并购溢价,提升累计超额收益率),阻止管理层的机会主义行为;条件稳健性会促进企业事后投资效率(并购前后绩效变化),保证项目的盈利性。进一步的研究表明：会计稳健性与企业投资效率的关系会随着上市公司代理成本的增加而越加明显。此外,国有企业和民营企业对于会计稳健性的公司治理效应存在差异。最后扩展了由 Lawrence,Sloan and Sun (2013)提出的稳健性操纵的定义。     

Short Selling and Index Arbitrage Profitability: Evidence from the SGX MSCI and TAIFEX Taiwan Index Futures Markets

There are numerous impediments to market efficiency and index arbitrage in real capital markets, including the uptick rule on short selling, execution risk, market impact costs, regulatory barriers, and capital constraints. Adopting and relaxing the uptick restriction in the Taiwan stock market facilitated a study on whether adjustments in this restriction influence the efficiency and arbitrage of the Singapore Exchange Limited (SGX) and the Taiwan Futures Exchange (TAIFEX) index futures markets. This study examines the above issues using five-minute intraday transaction data and performs an ex post test of arbitrage, ex ante test of arbitrage, and regression analysis. Empirical results indicate that relaxing the uptick rule should improve market efficiency and facilitate long arbitrage, subsequently accelerating the adjustment to no-arbitrage bounds and helping to decrease ex post and ex ante mispricing and underpricing following the relaxation.     

The Determinants of Execution Costs in Short‐Term Money Markets

Prior research attributes the observed negative relation between execution costs and trade size in opaque markets to two factors—information asymmetry and broker‐client relationships. We provide evidence that a trader's ex ante transaction price information and the relationship traders have with their brokers are both significant determinants of a trader's execution costs in an opaque market; however, traders who establish strong relationships with their brokers will achieve a greater reduction in execution costs than traders with ex ante transaction price information. We also find evidence that trade size has little explanatory power after controlling for a trader's ex ante transaction price information and broker‐client relationships.     

Imprecision in Accounting Measurement: Can It Be Value Enhancing?

Accounting measurements of firms' investments are usually imprecise. We study the economic consequences of such imprecision when it interacts with information asymmetry regarding an investment project's ex ante profitability, known only by the firm's managers. Absent agency and risk‐sharing considerations, we find that some degree of accounting imprecision could actually be value enhancing. We characterize the optimal degree of imprecision and identify its key determinants. The greater the information asymmetry regarding the project's profitability, the greater is the imprecision that should be tolerated in the measurement of the firm's investment.     

Military experience and corporate tax avoidance

We find that managers with military experience pursue less tax avoidance than other managers and pay an estimated $1–$2 million more in corporate taxes per firm-year. These managers also undertake less aggressive tax planning strategies with smaller tax reserves and fewer tax havens. Although they leave tax money on the table, boards hiring these managers benefit from reductions in other gray areas in corporate reporting. The broad implications are as follows: for employee selection, boards can consider employees’ personal characteristics as a control mechanism when outputs are difficult to contract ex ante or measure ex post.     

Ex post and ex ante returns and risks under different maturities of treasury bonds: evidence from developed and emerging markets

Based on asset pricing theory, reward/risk ratios vary positively with maturity of Treasury securities. We study the effect of increasing Treasury bonds' maturity on ex post and ex ante returns and risks in developed and emerging countries. As maturity increases, we show that ex post and ex ante returns are negative and they decrease while ex post and ex ante risks increase in developed countries, resulting in a sharp increase in the ex post and ex ante coefficient of variation. This indicates that investors are negatively rewarded for the risk they face for investing in Treasury bonds in developed markets. In emerging markets, as maturity increases, ex post and ex ante returns are positive for medium and long maturities and they increase while ex ante risk decreases with maturity. As maturity increases, the coefficient of variation in emerging and developed markets increases, indicating that reward to investors for facing extra risk decreases as maturity increases; however, investors are much better rewarded in emerging than developed markets.     

Evidence on the arbitrage efficiency of SPI index futures and options markets

This paper is concerned with arbitrage opportunities in the futures and futures option contracts traded on the Sydney Futures Exchange (SFE) within a put-call-futures-parity (PCFP) framework. Tick-by-tick transaction price data are employed so that the futures contracts, the call futures options and the put futures options can be matched within a one-minute interval. This paper also takes into account the realistic transaction costs that an arbitrager has to incur, including the implicit bid-ask spread. A thorough ex post analysis is first carried out. The results reveal a significant number of violations of the PCFP in the sample. Ex ante tests are then conducted whereby ex post profitable arbitrage strategies, signified by the matched trios of futures, put and call contracts, are executed with lags up to 3 min. The ex ante results are similar to the ex post results. However, further analysis reveals that the exploitability of the identified arbitrage opportunities is very limited due to the small trading volumes of the futures and options contracts. Thus, we conclude that there is no strong evidence against the arbitrage efficiency between the SPI index futures and options markets in Australia.      

The Fisher puzzle,real rate anomaly,and Wicksell effect

We study the relationships between interest and inflation rates using a recursive equation approach that takes into account both Fisher and Wicksell effects. Extending previous work, a state–space representation is used to estimate time-varying ex post Fisher and Wicksell equation effects. We subsequently recover ex ante interest and inflation rate series. Using these ex ante rate series, we estimate an ex ante Fisher equation, including both time-varying intercept estimates of the ex ante real interest rates and time-varying Fisher coefficients. Our results for the U.S. and three other countries support the Fisher propositions after taking into account Wicksell effects.     

Evidence on the role of accounting conservatism in monitoring managers’ investment decisions

Watts (2003), among others, argues that conservatism helps in corporate governance by mitigating agency problems associated with managers’ investment decisions. We hypothesize that if conservatism reduces managers’ex ante incentives to take on negative net present value projects and improves the ex post monitoring of investments, firms with more conservative accounting ought to have higher future profitability and lower likelihood (and magnitude) of future special items charges. Consistent with this expectation, we find that firms with more conservative accounting have (i) higher future cash flows and gross margins and (ii) lower likelihood and magnitude of special items charges than firms with less conservative accounting.     

The Disciplinary Role of Financial Statements: Evidence from Mergers and Acquisitions of Privately Held Targets

This study examines whether requiring the disclosure of audited financial statements disciplines managers’ mergers and acquisitions (M&As) decisions. When an M&A transaction meets certain disclosure thresholds, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requires the public acquirer to disclose the target's audited financial statements after the merger is completed. Using hand‐collected data, I find that the disclosure of private targets’ financial statements is associated with better acquisition decisions. Furthermore, I find that this disciplining effect of disclosure is more pronounced when monitoring by outside capital providers is more difficult and costly, and when other disciplining mechanisms are weaker. Finally, these findings are robust to several alternative explanations, such as monitoring from blockholders and voluntary disclosures. In sum, the evidence suggests that the ex post mandatory disclosure of private targets’ accounting information disciplines managers’ acquisition decisions and improves acquisition efficiency.     

An Analysis of Concepts and Evidence on the Question of Whether IFRS Should be Conservative

Do international accounting standards require conservative accounting? The IASB's conceptual framework suggests that they should not, while the research literature is largely silent on the matter, typically presuming conservatism to be an outcome of private contracting rather than standardized, public, general purpose financial reporting. In this paper, we analyze the actual requirements of IFRS. We find multiple examples of recognition requirements that lead to unconditional conservatism, measurement requirements that lead to conditional conservatism, and also presentation/disclosure requirements that further support a conservative reporting environment. These findings complement, support and deepen existing evidence in the empirical literature that accounting is in practice conservative. We show, however, that the requirements for conservatism in IFRS conflict with, first, the IASB's stated position in its conceptual framework that accounting should not be conservative and, second, the private contracting explanation for conservatism that is generally accepted in the literature. What is missing, and lies behind both conflicts, is an acknowledgement and understanding of the role of an agency/contracting perspective in enhancing the decision‐usefulness of general purpose accounting standards, given the information/incentive asymmetry and uncertainty that characterizes the real‐world context in which those standards operate. From a policy perspective, such an understanding would reconcile the IASB's conceptual framework with the actual requirements of IFRS. From a research literature perspective, such an understanding would re‐position accounting standards as central to the practice of accounting conservatism, which would in turn require revision to the generally accepted theory of a private contracting explanation for the empirical evidence of conservative accounting practice.     

An ex ante analysis of put-call parity

The authors previously had extended the theoretical put-call parity models developed by Stoll (1969) and Merton (1973) to include a dividend term. Ex post tests of the models were generally consistent with market efficiency, but a sufficient number of hedges had high enough returns to warrant analysis of ex ante results. The purpose of this study was to construct hedges 5 and 15 minutes after they were initially identified as having an ex post return in excess of $20 per hedge. The results indicate that mispriced options adjust and that economic profit is sensitive to the level of transaction costs and unlikely even for member firms.     

财务报告问询函对会计稳健性的影响:直接效应与溢出效应

基于非处罚性监管的视角，考察财务报告问询函对收函公司会计稳健性的直接效应，以及与收函公司具有联结关系的公司会计稳健性的间接影响即溢出效应。结果发现：财务报告问询函能提高收函公司的会计稳健性，并对与收函公司具有审计师联结和高管联结关系的上市公司（简称“关联公司”）的会计稳健性产生积极的监管效应；正式制度与非正式制度的异质性会导致问询函监管效应的差异，即在交易所监管力度较强和社会信任环境更好时，财务报告问询函对收函公司及具有审计师联结关系的关联公司的会计稳健性影响更明显，但对具有高管联结关系的关联公司的会计稳健性影响并不显著。     

Managerial conservatism, project choice, and debt

We show that the incentive for managers to build their reputationsdistorts firms' investment policies in favor of relatively safeprojects, thereby aligning managers' interests with those ofbondholders, even though managers are hired and fired by shareholders.Tbis effect opposes the familiar agency problem of risky debtthat is imperfectly covenant-protected, wherein shareholdersare tempted to favor excessively risk projects in order to expropriatebondholders. Consequently, when managerial concern for reputationresults in conservatism, it can actually make shareholders betteroff ex ante by allowing the firm to issue more debt. We examinehow the optimal choice of leverage from the shareholders' standpointis influenced by takeover activity, and how the adoption ofantitakeover measures affects a firm's investment policy andleverage choice.     

Strategic ex ante contracts: rent extraction and opportunity costs

This article cosiders the possibility that a seller can contract with one uninformed buyer prior to an auction involving two potential buyers. The seller's optimal strategic ex ante contract more accurately reflects joint opportunity costs of the seller and the contracted buyer, and therefore extracts more rent from the entrant. Moreover, this ex ante contract mitigates the seller's ex post rent seeking vis‐à‐vis the contracted buyer. Accordingly, it may create more social welfare than the absence of ex ante contracts, depending upon the contracted buyer's financial constraint and the distributions of trade surplus. Implementation of the optimal strategic ex ante contract and policy implications are discussed.     

An alternative approach to evaluating the agreement between financial markets

This research investigates that the price relationship between a stock index and its associated nearby futures markets can be explained by the cost-of-carry model using the concordance correlation (CC) coefficient in the US financial markets. The main purpose of this research is to confirm that the CC coefficient is an appropriate methodology to determine ex post arbitrage opportunities and to maximize ex ante arbitrage profits through the analysis of the price relationship derived from the cost-of-carry model. To increase the robustness of the results and to enable us to generalize our conclusions, this analysis is carried out in consideration of external uncertainty, including the marking-to-market procedure of futures contracts and the transaction cost on the stock index and its futures markets, under several assumptions related to the conditions of transactions. Examining transaction price data on the S&P 500 stock index and its futures markets shows that the CC coefficient gives a good result for ex ante arbitrage profits and is appropriate for analyzing the relationship between the observed stock index futures market price and its theoretical price derived from the cost-of-carry model.     

Understanding Investor Sentiment: The Case of Soccer

We examine the extent to which the stock market's inefficient responses to resolutions of uncertainty depend on investors’ biased ex ante beliefs regarding the probability distribution of future event outcomes or their ex post irrational reactions to these outcomes. We use a sample of publicly traded European soccer clubs and analyze their returns around important matches. Using a novel proxy for investors’ expectations based on contracts traded on betting exchanges (prediction markets), we find that within our sample, investor sentiment is attributable, in part, to a systematic bias in investors’ ex ante expectations. Investors are overly optimistic about their teams’ prospects ex ante and, on average, end up disappointed ex post, leading to negative postgame abnormal returns. Our evidence may have important implications for firms’ investment decisions and corporate control transactions.     

Career concerns and peer effects in institutional tournaments: Evidence from ECB reserve currency portfolios

Using data on European Central Bank's (ECB's) reserve currency portfolios, we find that money managers react to relative rankings (i.e., own vs. peers’ performance) by adjusting portfolio active risk levels measured ex ante by actual deviations from their benchmark. This occurs in the absence of explicit incentives as no monetary reward is promised for winning this “tournament” among portfolio managers. We collect information on managers’ characteristics, including age, education, tenure, salary, and career path, and investigate the role played by implicit incentives. We provide evidence that both individual career concerns and institutional peer pressure contribute to the documented relationship between ranking and risk taking.     

Hedging Corporate Bonds

We examine Treasury bond and stock index futures, the swap curve and two types of hypothetical corporate bond assets as alternative hedging instruments for portfolios of corporate bonds. Conducting ex post and ex ante tests we find evidence that credit quality and maturity are important sources of basis risk when hedging corporate bonds whose credit rating are below triple A. We conclude that a new corporate hedging instrument may be useful for those wishing to hedge corporate bond portfolios provided that transaction costs are not too high relative to existing futures contracts.     

会计稳健性研究述评

越来越多的研究表明,会计稳健性是财务报告最重要的特征。本文系统地评论了会计稳健性研究的最新内容。第一方面为会计稳健性的不同计量方法及各种计量方法之间存在的关系,第二方面为稳健性起因的最新研究,尤其是契约对企业会计稳健性的影响,第三方面为会计稳健性的经济后果,包括会计稳健性对资本成本的影响以及对企业真实经济活动的影响。文章最后指出了会计稳健性未来研究的方向。