Determinants of audit fees in Bangladesh

This paper reports the results of an analysis of the determinants of audit fees of both financial and non-financial companies in Bangladesh. The Bangladeshi audit services market is unusual in that there is no direct involvement of international audit firms in it. The results of the regressions show that the size of the auditee has the greatest influence on audit fees. Whilst there was no international Big Six grouping, it was possible to construct a group of Bangladeshi audit firms which commanded a price premium, based on their size and whether they had a link with an international firm of auditors. Financial services companies were found to have higher audit fees relative to non-financial companies. Subsidiaries of multi-national holding companies also had higher audit fees. The surprising result was that auditees which employed at least one qualified accountant had higher audit fees.     

政策连续性、非金融企业影子银行化与社会责任承担

基于2006-2017年非金融类A股上市公司数据,本文考察了非金融企业影子银行化对社会责任承担的影响,并进一步研究了政策连续性对非金融企业影子银行化与社会责任承担之间关系的影响。研究发现,非金融企业影子银行化会抑制社会责任承担行为,且这种效应在市场套利动机强、公司治理水平较低、外部融资能力弱的企业中更为明显。政策连续性程度提高会减弱非金融企业影子银行化与社会责任承担之间的负向关系。因此,本文提出抑制经济“脱实向虚”,增强政策稳定性和连续性,促进实体经济平稳发展的政策建议。     

金融资产投资、杠杆率与企业风险承担——基于非金融企业的视角

本文以2007~2018年我国A股非金融上市公司为研究样本,运用动态面板系统广义矩估计法,研究杠杆率在金融资产投资与企业风险承担之间的中介效应影响,分析金融资产投资、杠杆率、企业风险承担三者之间的传导链条。研究发现:杠杆率在金融资产投资与企业风险承担水平之间发挥了部分中介效应;金融资产投资增加会直接导致企业风险承担水平上升,同时也会通过提高杠杆率间接地提升企业风险承担水平。本研究丰富了实体企业金融投资后果的相关文献,为实体企业的投资决策以及风险管理提供了参考,也为监管部门去杠杆防风险提供了经验证据。     

实施整合报告能否提高信息的价值相关性——来自第一个强制实施整合报告的国家南非的经验证据

本文以世界上第一个强制实施整合报告的国家(南非)的上市公司为样本,研究了2010年其强制实施后的市场反应结果。通过对整合报告实施前后信息价值相关性变化的考察,来检验整合报告的实施是否对企业价值产生影响。结果发现,在整合报告制度实施前,由于存在自愿性且不规范的披露,投资者对财务信息的决策依赖程度已有所下降,而当正式实施整合报告后,财务信息价值相关性下降的趋势有所减缓,从而使整合信息发挥更强的决策有用性。这说明整合报告的实施,非财务信息对股价的解释力度提升,可以弥补财务信息价值相关性下降的趋势,从而间接支持了国际社会倡导实施整合报告的目的,使得股价更能全面反映企业价值创造及可持续发展能力。     

Leverage and valuation effects: How global liquidity shapes sectoral balance sheets

Global financial conditions have been shown to be important drivers of cross-border capital flows. But how do they interact with the leverage of the domestic sectors? That is the question this paper proposes to answer. Financial and non-financial sectors increase their leverage pro-cyclically, i.e., during periods of favourable domestic economic performance and whenever global financial conditions are more loose. The general government is an exception: it has a stabilizing counter-cyclical role, by taking on more debt in times of worse economic outcomes. Moreover, there is an important interaction between financial market stress and leverage, whereby heightened financial stress leads to higher leverage via the valuation component of balance sheets - this relationship vanishes when leverage measures are stripped of these price swings.     

The use of the Internet for corporate reporting in the Mercosur (Southern common market): The Argentina case

This study examines disclosure practices on the websites of companies listed on the Buenos Aires Stock Exchange. We perform content analysis to provide evidence on Internet reporting practices by 84 publicly traded firms. We also identify the characteristics of firms that communicate financial and non-financial information on the Internet. We find that companies in the financial and insurance, services and mining industries disclose more financial and non-financial information on their websites than companies in other industries. The average concentration of ownership is 68%, with 27% of the companies being controlled by foreign groups. Those companies with higher concentration disclose more financial and non financial information than companies with less concentration. Companies in the financial and insurance and service industries, utilize their websites for commercial purposes to facilitate access to customers to their accounts and also to sell services. This e-commerce usage of websites is less developed in other industries. About 71% of companies in the financial and insurance industry are included in the Merval25 index and are audited by Big 4. These companies are both larger in size and less profitable than companies in other industries. We find that profitability and leverage do not have significant effect on corporate Internet reporting practices and that growth has negative effect on corporate Internet reporting practices. We also find that companies in the mining sector provide significantly more disclosure about social responsibility indicating a desire to improve the public image of harming the environment. The results documented, herein, extend the literature on voluntary disclosure of financial and non-financial information using the Internet in emerging markets.     

中国非金融企业金融化的影响因素分析

作为经济金融化微观层面的重要表现,非金融企业金融化现象日益凸显.以2001-2014年我国A股上市的非金融企业为研究对象,借助Eviews6.0软件,运用最小二乘法,从宏观和微观两个层面实证分析我国非金融企业金融化的影响因素.研究表明:企业的金融化程度随着其股东价值最大化观念的增强而加深,企业金融资产持有比例与其主营业务利润率呈U型关系,稳定的宏观经济环境会弱化企业的金融投资行为.     

The impact of idiosyncratic risk on corporate financialisation——Evidence from China

Using the quarterly data of non-financial companies listed on China's A-share market from 2007 to 2019, this paper examines the relationship between the idiosyncratic risk formed based on the secondary market exchanges and the corporate financialization from the perspective of a market feedback effect. The empirical results show that idiosyncratic risk has a significant impact on the allocation of financial assets of non-financial enterprises, which is one of the motivating factors for the financialization of non-financial enterprises. Compared with SOEs, large enterprises and non-manufacturing enterprises; private enterprises, small and medium-sized enterprises, and manufacturing enterprises will allocate more financial assets when idiosyncratic risk increases. Mechanism analysis shows that managers risk aversion and financing constraints increase the impact of idiosyncratic risk on financial asset allocation while strengthening the external monitoring mechanism of institutional investors has the opposite effect. The research findings of this paper help to understand whether secondary financial markets affect the financial investment decisions of real firms in transition economies, and also have implications for how to govern the “transition from real to virtual” of real enterprises in China.     

A comparison of the stock market reactions of convertible bond offerings between financial and non-financial institutions: Do they differ?

We focus on the stock price reaction to convertible bond offering made by financial institutions and find that the cumulative abnormal return over the three day interval around convertible bond issuance is 1.41 percentage higher than that for non-financial institutions. This result supports our hypothesis that since financials are heavily regulated, the market is less likely to assume that the issuance of convertible bond by financials signals information that are overvalued. Our results remain robust after controlling for a number of firm-, issue-, and market-specific characteristics as well as the level of short selling pressure induced by convertible bond arbitrageurs.     

Financial versus non-financial information: The impact of information organization and presentation in a Balanced Scorecard

This paper investigates how the organization and presentation of performance measures affect how evaluators weight financial and non-financial measures when evaluating performance. We conduct two experiments, in which participants act as senior executives charged with evaluating two business-unit managers. Performance differences between business units are contained in either a financial or one of the three non-financial categories. Specifically, the first experiment studies how organizing measures in a Balanced Scorecard (BSC) format affects performance evaluations. Our results show that when the performance differences are contained in the financial category, evaluators that use a BSC-format place more weight on financial category measures than evaluators using an unformatted scorecard. Conversely, when performance differences are contained in the non-financial categories, whether measures are organized into a BSC-format or into an unformatted scorecard has no impact on the evaluation. The second experiment shows that when performance markers are added to the scorecards (i.e., +, −, and = signs for above-target, below-target, and on-target performance), evaluators that use a BSC-format weight measures in any category containing a performance difference more heavily than evaluators using an unformatted scorecard. Our findings suggest that firms should carefully consider how to present and organize measures to get the intended effect on performance evaluations.     

Financial instruments in non-financial firms: what do we know?

Accounting for financial instruments is one of the most controversial standard setting issues. Attempts by standard setters to expand the scope of fair value measurement provoked fierce opposition from preparers, in particular from the financial industry but also, albeit less frequently and less scathingly, from non-financial firms. Academic research could help to bring the discussion onto a more objective level. Most of the existing research focuses on the financial industry and uses US disclosure data from the 1990s. More recent papers use recognition and measurement data from IFRS financial statements, again primarily from the financial industry. This paper provides novel evidence on the relevance of financial instruments for non-financial firms of the STOXX Europe 600 Index. The results in particular refute the myths that fair value measurement of financial instruments is pervasive and that many fair value measurements are of the problematic ‘level 3’ quality. The empirical evidence forms the background for a survey of the small body of existing research on the effects of accounting standards relating to financial instruments on non-financial firms. This survey covers research on the effects on risk management, on the volatility of cash flows and earnings, on earnings management and on the effects on user decisions. Both in the empirical sections and in the survey sections, I identify a number of areas for further research to overcome the poor current state of knowledge.     

Audit committees’ social capital and financial reporting quality

We draw on social capital theory to examine the relationship between audit committee (AC) members’ social capital and financial reporting quality. Using US data for the period 2001–2010, our results suggest that non-AC directors’ social capital does not appear to be relevant to financial reporting quality. As far as AC members are concerned, our findings show a negative relationship between their social capital and financial reporting quality, suggesting a ‘dark side’ to social capital. Specifically, we find that sitting in multiple ACs (centrality) has a negative impact on reporting quality only for those AC members designated as financial experts. When other proxies for social capital are considered (connectedness, brokerage position and strong ties), our results show that the quality of financial reporting significantly decreases with the social capital of non-financial experts sitting in the AC. We contribute to prior research by: (i) relying on social capital theory, which is widely neglected in accounting research, (ii) using multiple metrics to capture the complex dimensions of social capital, and (iii) discriminating between the effects of financial and non-financial experts’ social capital on reporting quality. Our results suggest policy-makers might wish to limit financial experts’ multiple directorships as well as assess the actual contribution of non-financial experts to AC effectiveness.     

Processes of auditability in sustainability assurance – the case of materiality construction

This study examines how financial audit-styled concepts such as materiality are transferred to non-financial audit arenas. Drawing on a case study of assurors working within a Big 4 professional services firm, we uncover a number of interrelated features of the materiality determination and assessment process within sustainability assurance (assurance on sustainability reports). We illustrate how assuror flexibility, underpinned by assuror intuition, is central to uncovering assurance technologies deemed capable of addressing the materiality of ambiguous sustainability data. Assurors with no financial audit background retrospectively rationalise their intuition using the assumed authority of structured financial audit methodologies. This facilitates the tentative translation of financial audit knowledge to the sustainability assurance domain. Collaborative, holistic decision-making processes inform the assurors’ continual construction of materiality and are characterised by alliances of (accountant and non-accountant) ‘expert’ assurors merging formal and tacit knowledge. These alliances seek social cohesion within sustainability assurance teams in order to establish a social consensus among assurors around the materiality determination and assessment process. Our analysis develops and extends Power’s theorisation of how new areas are made auditable and advances our understanding of the more practical aspects of non-financial assurance services offered by Big 4 professional services firms.     

我国商业银行中小企业信贷风险评估体系的构建

开展中小企业贷款业务是商业银行优化信贷资产结构的重要措施,快速、准确评估其信贷风险是商业银行亟须解决的技术问题.经过长期实地调研,本文建立了适用于我国的中小企业信贷风险评估体系,其中,所建非财务指标体系,从行业环境、企业经营管理水平、经营者经验与素质、信用品质四方面进行评估;财务指标体系包括现金流流动负债比、净资产总资产比、息税前利润流动负债比、总资产周转速度、流动比率、现金流贷款比六个指标.以Logit统计回归模型为基础建立的评估模型,在分别评估非财务指标信息和财务指标信息后,加权相加两方面结果得到综合评估结果.实证检验证明,该评估体系的评估正确率达到95%以上.     

TESTING PRICE TAKING IN LOAN AND DEPOSIT MARKETS BY FINANCIAL FIRMS

This paper tests for the failure of price taking in the markets for financial and nonfinancial services. A firm that can purchase or sell an unlimited quantity at the prevailing price is a price taker. This hypothesis is tested using historical data on a sample of eighteen banks, considering financial services, demand deposits, time deposits, labor, cash, materials, and capital. The empirical results indicate little flexibility in the financial technology, whether price taking is imposed on all markets or only on the labor market.     

Excessive financial services CEO pay and financial crisis: Evidence from calibration estimation

The questions of whether there ever existed excessive risk-taking incentives from executive compensation in the financial industry, and whether top executives of financial services firms actually responded to such excessive incentives that eventually led to the crisis remain unanswered. The prior research has attempted to answer the second question, however, with conflicting evidence and without a clear definition of excessive. To answer the first question, this paper uses a numerical calibration approach to estimate the optimal level of CEO pay and derive the excessive compensation which provides excessive risk-taking incentives. We then examine the extent of excessive compensation in the financial industry relative to the non-financial industries during the 2000s and whether there were changes in compensation practices between the post Sarbanes–Oxley period and the pre-crisis period. We find mixed evidence in favor of the presence of higher excessive pay in the financial industry, and the CEO compensation practices remained largely unchanged over time. In addition, the relation between excessive pay and excessive risk-taking in the financial industry is somewhat weak, suggesting that CEO compensation might not be a major cause for the crisis in 2008.     

Macro-Networks: An application to euro area financial accounts

This paper develops a financial network, designated the “Macro-Network”, that depicts the connections between the main financial and non-financial sectors of the economy in the various financial instruments of the euro area. The Macro-Network comprises of linkages across financial and non-financial sectors in each country. These country-level sector networks are then connected by the cross-border links between the individual banking sectors. Using the Macro-Network to simulate financial shocks, we find that the propagation effects depend on the underlying network structure, which evolves over time. After the financial crisis, bilateral linkages contracted sharply, reflecting the surge in counterparty risk and the de-leveraging processes. Nonetheless, our analysis suggests that even after this process, vulnerabilities remained in the euro area financial system, while a more diversified portfolio of cross-border exposures might mitigate the shock effects. We identify sectors which are most relevant for the propagation of financial shocks in the Macro-Network.     

Financial globalization, financial crises and contagion

Two observations suggest that financial globalization played an important role in the recent financial crisis. First, more than half of the rise in net borrowing of the U.S. non-financial sectors since the mid-1980s has been financed by foreign lending. Second, the collapse of the U.S. housing and mortgage-backed-securities markets had worldwide effects on financial institutions and asset markets. Using an open-economy model where financial intermediaries play a central role, we show that financial integration leads to a sharp rise in net credit in the most financially developed country and to large asset price spillovers of country-specific shocks to bank capital. The impacts of these shocks on asset prices are amplified by bank capital requirements based on mark-to-market.     

非财务利益相关者与企业资本结构决策

财务利益相关者不能完全解释企业资本结构决策.从非财务利益相关者的角度出发,结合企业自身特征,探讨其对企业资本结构决策的影响.研究结果表明:非财务利益相关者的自身特征如负债水平和行业集中度等会对企业资本结构决策产生影响.进一步地,企业自身特征如产品异质性、行业地位等会改变非财务利益相关者对企业资本结构决策的影响程度.