Social trust and foreign ownership: Evidence from qualified foreign institutional investors in China

We investigate the effects of social trust on foreign institutional investors’ equity holdings in listed Chinese firms from 2005 to 2011. We find that social trust embedded in the regional environment is an important factor for the investment decisions of foreign institutional investors. We also find that the proportion and likelihood of foreign ownership increases with the level of social trust. The results support the notion that social trust and trust-related information help mitigate informational barriers in international equity investments. Our results are robust to alternative measures of social trust and a range of model specifications, including instrumental variable estimation. We document that the effects of social trust on foreign ownership diminishes in the presence of organizational learning, better formal institutional development, conservative financial reporting, and asset transparency. We also show that foreign institutional investors from countries with a common law origin are more likely to incorporate trust-related information in their investment decisions.     

Accounting conservatism and voluntary corporate governance mechanisms by Australian firms

This study examines the relationship between voluntary adoption of selected corporate governance mechanisms and accounting conservatism for a sample of firms listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) over the 11‐year period prior to the promulgation of the ASX Corporate Governance Council Good Governance Principles and Best Practice Recommendations in 2003. Using four accounting and market‐based accounting conservatism measures, our results provide evidence of both conditional and unconditional conservatism in accounting reporting for Australian firms. We find that voluntary audit committee formation, increasing board independence and decreasing board size are positively associated with unconditional accounting conservatism and negatively related to the degree of conditional conservatism. Our results support the contention that firms voluntarily adopting perceived best practice corporate governance mechanisms employ unconditional accounting conservatism as a complimentary agency control device and are consistent with the observed negative association between the unconditional and conditional forms of accounting conservatism practice.     

所有权性质、CEO任期与会计稳健性

以高阶理论为基础,运用声誉机制理论、任期五阶段模型、任职期限理论、职业生涯关注等相关理论,以我国2010~2014年 A 股上市公司为样本,实证研究了 CEO 现有任期和预期任期对会计稳健性的影响,并进一步研究了产权性质差异对两者关系的调节效应。研究发现,CEO 现有任期与会计稳健性呈倒U 型关系,CEO 预期任期与会计稳健性正相关。与非国有上市公司相比,在国有上市公司中,CEO 现有任期和预期任期对会计稳健性的影响都更强。     

终极控制股东、金字塔结构与会计稳健性

我国股权大都集中在大股东的手中,终极控制股东普遍采用金字塔股权结构的方式对底层公司实施控制并影响会计稳健性。基于Basu模型,采用2012-2017年深沪两市A股上市公司数据,对终极控制股东产权性质、金字塔股权结构对上市公司会计稳健性进行研究。结果表明:与终极控制股东为非国有的上市公司相比,终极控制股东为国有的上市公司会计稳健性更高;金字塔层级增加导致会计稳健性降低;金字塔层级的增加对于国有控股企业和非国有控股企业会计稳健性的影响存在差异,国有终极控制上市公司的会计稳健性更高。