ACCOUNTING DOESN'T NEED MUCH FIXING (JUST SOME REINTERPRETING)

In response to Stewart's proposal for comprehensive reform of GAAP, this article offers a classic defense of traditional accounting practices and standards. Like the recent efforts of the FASB to achieve greater balance sheet realism through "fair value accounting," Stewart's call to make economic profit the centerpiece of GAAP is said to rest on a mistaken premise–the widespread notion that audited financial statements are intended primarily to guide equity investors in setting stock prices. More important than the valuation role of public accounting is its "stewardship" function in detecting theft and gross misuse of corporate assets. And it is this stewardship role, with its emphasis on producing reliable (and conservative) numbers that can be readily verified by auditors, that is likely to be compromised by Stewart's proposal, fair-value accounting, and other well-meaning attempts to incorporate greater economic realism into GAAP statements.
At the same time, however, the author agrees with Stewart's contention that GAAP a accounting numbers have major limitations for investors seeking to establish the market values of companies and for managers attempting to make value-increasing investment and operating decisions. Accordingly, he endorses many of Stewart's proposed modifications of GAAP both for internal purposes, such as performance evaluation and incentive compensation, and for voluntary supplemental reporting to the investment community.     

A Temporal Analysis of Earnings Surprises: Profits versus Losses

I show that median earnings surprise has shifted rightward from small negative (miss analyst estimates by a small amount) to zero (meet analyst estimates exactly) to small positive (beat analyst estimates by a small amount) during the 16 years, 1984 to 1999. I show that a rightward temporal shift in median surprise from negative to positive describes earnings, but neither profits nor losses. Median profit surprise shifts within the positive quadrant, from zero to one cent per share. Median loss surprise shifts within the negative quadrant from extreme negative (about -33 cents per share) to zero. I show that the median surprise for profits exceeds that for losses in every year. I document significant positive temporal trends in both meet and beat analyst estimates for both profits and losses, but I find a greater frequency of profits that either meet or beat analyst estimates in every year. I find a significant positive temporal trend in positive profits that are "a little bit of good news," and a significant negative temporal trend in managers who report losses that are an "extreme amount of bad news." My results are robust to the four internal validity threats I consider—namely temporal changes in: (1) analyst forecast accuracy, (2) the mix of earnings of one sign preceded by earnings of another sign four quarters ago, (3) the timeliness of the most recent analyst forecast, and (4) the I/B/E/S definition of actual earnings. I find that managers of growth firms are relatively more likely than managers of value firms to report good news profits. I show that when they do report positive profit surprises, managers of growth firms are more likely to report "a little bit of good news" in every year.     

A remark on managerial behaviour and agency cost

This paper studies the relationship between managers’ private profit and agency cost using dynamic modelling methods. We conclude that the agency cost is a concave function of the managers’ private profit and that the managers’ private profit will lead to more investment cash outflow.     

EVA Momentum: The One Ratio That Tells the Whole Story

Virtually all corporate managers use ratios like profit margin, earnings growth, and return on equity to set goals, analyze operations, and measure success or failure. Yet all ratios are wrong in the sense that every one of them can make it appear that operations are improving when a business actually is faltering, and vice versa .
In this article, one of the pioneers of the modern economic profit school of financial management claims to have discovered a new ratio that accurately consolidates all the pluses and minuses of decisions and operations into a single reliable overall measure that cannot be increased without truly creating value. "EVA Momentum," as the measure is called, is the change in a company's economic profit (or EVA) in a given period divided by its sales in the prior period. In other words, it is the size-adjusted change in economic profit.
The author goes on to demonstrate why most companies can use EVA Momentum as both their overarching financial target and the best way to keep score for multiple business lines. The article also shows why EVA Momentum is a better performance measure than ROI and that, as a diagnostic and management tool, it provides a more effective alternative to the popular DuPont ROI formula. Unlike the DuPont formula, EVA Momentum reflects the contributions to overall performance of important factors such as profitable growth, strategic retrenchment, and the quality of resource allocation decisions in general. At the same time, it provides a more accurate and informative means of examining performance, weighing tradeoffs, identifying investment opportunities, and prioritizing initiatives—all on the basis of their expected impact on a company's market value.     

Unobservable transfer price exceeds marginal cost when the manager is evaluated using a balanced scorecard

This study investigates the optimal level of transfer prices chosen by managers in a divisionalized firm when they are evaluated based on a balanced scorecard. A unique assumption of our model is that transfer prices are unobservable to a competing firm's managers. In contrast to the findings in several studies that examine strategic transfer pricing, this research shows that a manager who is evaluated using a balanced scorecard chooses a transfer price that exceeds marginal cost given a market competitor in a specific economic environment. This result is caused mainly by our model's assumption that a manager considers the competitor's profit in his/her in decision-making when the objective is to maximize long-term profit. This study makes a significant contribution to the strategic transfer pricing literature by showing that even if the transfer price is unobservable to rivals, the optimal transfer price exceeds marginal cost when the final product market is characterized by price competition, something not shown in previous analytical accounting research.     

Investor reactions to derivative use and outcomes

How do investors evaluate managers who choose whether or not to use derivatives once the outcomes of those decisions become known? Different theories offer different predictions, and we test these in three experiments. Results show that investors are more satisfied with firm managers and assign a higher value to firms when managers use derivatives (that address firm risks) than when they do not. This result occurs even though we hold constant the economic differences typically present when comparing derivative use versus non-use (that is, ex ante risk and ex post outcome), suggesting that investors reward firms that use derivatives. Additional tests reveal that investors believe that managers who use derivatives in these situations exhibit a higher level of decision-making care than those who do not use derivatives. We also document that these inferences about greater decision-making care do not apply to the speculative use of derivatives. Overall, our study adds to our understanding of how investors judge companies that use derivatives, given the resulting outcomes of such use.     

Share repurchases as a potential tool to mislead investors

A rich literature argues that stock repurchases often serve as positive economic signals beneficial to investors. Yet due to their inherent flexibility, open-market repurchase programs have long been criticized as weak signals lacking commitment. We evaluate whether some managers potentially use buyback announcements to mislead investors. We focus on cases where managers were seemingly under heavy pressure to boost stock prices and might have announced a repurchase only to convey a false signal. For suspect cases, the immediate market reaction to a buyback announcement does not differ from that generally observed. However over longer horizons, suspect firms do not enjoy the improvement in economic performance otherwise observed. Suspect firms repurchase less stock. Further, managers in suspect firms have comparatively higher exposure to stock options, a potentially endogenous result suggesting greater sensitivity to both stock valuation and to future equity dilution. Overall, the results suggest only a limited number of managers may have used buybacks in a misleading way as “cheap talk.” Yet as theory also suggests, we find no long-run economic benefit to this behavior.     

Responses to risk in tournaments

Due to their inefficient use of information, promotion incentives, which can be modeled as tournaments, can induce sub-optimal actions on the part of managers. This is a problem for firms because it leads to choices that do not maximize profit. This also can pose interpretation and comparison problems for research studies that employ tournament incentives. We demonstrate a situation where tournament incentives eliminate the effects of project risk on managers’ decisions as concerns with winning take precedence over concerns of maximizing expected profit. We also report the results of an experiment and find actual behavior to be fairly well explained by theoretical predictions. However, we find systematic deviations that lead to decisions that are more consistent with profit maximization than the economic theory predicts.     

Is cloud computing the digital solution to the future of banking?

This study investigates the impact of banks’ strategic move to cloud computing on bank performance and risk-taking. Based on a novel index of banks’ exposure to cloud computing, we find that banks’ adoption of cloud computing is associated with lower cost efficiency, higher profit efficiency, and greater operational risk using data on Chinese banks over the period 2008–2019. We also find that cloud computing interacts with other newly emerging technologies, leading to synergy gains in cost efficiency and operational risk control but with a substitutive effect on profit efficiency from blockchain. The findings are of timely policy importance and practical relevance for regulators, policy-makers, and bank managers.     

Executive Stock Options: To Expense or Not?

In analyzing the decision to expense stock options, we find a greater likelihood of options expensing for firms with greater transparency and a closer alignment of interests between managers and shareholders. These results provide indirect evidence that expensing is more likely in firms that practice good corporate governance. We show that firms are less likely to expense when option usage is higher and that this negative relation is stronger for firms that are smaller, have high growth, and are less profitable. We also find that the announcement period returns are not significantly different from zero.     

会计变革与经济效率：基于会计思想史的角度

财务会计是确定企业经济效益的工具。在企业外部,通过财务会计提供的企业利润信息,借助资本逐利天性,引导投资者的理性决策,客观上"自发地"实现社会资源的配置效率。在企业内部,经营者通过会计提供的利润信息,决策并引导资源在产品之间的有效率配置和有效率生产。因此,会计就是一个服务于提高经济效率的工具。当一个时期的会计能够满足实现提高经济效率的需要,它就对经济发展起促进作用;反之则会扭曲资源配置,阻碍经济发展。会计确定企业利润的方法,一定要与不同时期经济发展状况相适应,以满足合理引导资源配置、提高经济效率的需要,这是促进会计变革的根本动力。功利性利用会计未尝不可,但如何成功地功利性利用会计,是一个需要继续研究的问题。     

Evaluation of Extraordinary and Exceptional Items Disclosed by Hong Kong Companies

This study evaluates extraordinary and exceptional items (EI) disclosed in financial statements by Hong Kong companies from 1989 to 1993, prior to revision of SSAP 2. The results indicate that disclosures of positive EI were associated with market expectations of profit before taxes. If market expectations were higher than profit before EI and taxes (PBEI), positive EI (gains) were likely to be disclosed to adjust PBEI upwards and thus reduce the gap between reported and expected profits.
The results relating to negative EI (losses) showed that if companies had low historical economic performance they were more likely to disclose negative EI. Because weak historical economic performance is likely to be associated with low market expectations, management used this opportunity to 'spring clean' in order to show better economic performance in future years.
These findings suggest that managers engage in earnings management through disclosure of extraordinary items when they have flexibility to do so. In order to improve quality of financial disclosure, better accounting standards need to be developed for disclosures of extraordinary items, especially by newly developed and developing countries where accounting standards are at the formative stage.     

Postmodern Corporate Finance

One of the core tenets of modern finance theory is that corporations create value by producing operating rates of return on capital that are greater than the cost of capital. “Postmodern” corporate finance, while reaffirming the importance of earning an adequate return on capital, also attempts to restore at least part of the traditional corporate emphasis on top-line growth that prevailed before the intense focus on returns by modern shareholder value advocates. One important reason for the heightened emphasis on growth in addition to returns is that most rate-of-return measures used by companies and investors are based on conservative accounting practices that make old assets look more profitable than new ones, thereby discouraging investments in growth. This article introduces a new return measure called “Gross Business Return” that, when evaluated against a Required Return framework that reflects the level of current stock prices, has a stronger correlation with how companies are valued by the stock market. Moreover, in reviewing historical returns over time for both the market and specific industries, the author's research suggests that the market appears to demand considerably lower current returns than those implied by traditional weighted average cost of capital (WACC) approaches. And to the extent corporate executives rely on WACC, they could be passing up valuable growth opportunities. To help evaluate tradeoffs between growth and return, the author introduces a cash-based measure of corporate economic profit called Residual Cash Earnings. Unlike most traditional return and economic profit measures, Residual Cash Earnings, when expressed as a percentage of sales, provides a way for corporate managers to identify growth opportunities that, while producing current returns lower than WACC, are likely to add value over a multi-year time horizon. These new measures and analytical tools are suitable for strategic planning, budgeting, resource allocation, performance measurement, and rewards. Consistent application of these principles across these management processes provides a framework for constantly rebalancing the emphasis on growth and return to adapt to changes in the economy, industry, and competitive landscape.     

Industry regulation,fund characteristics,and the efficiency of Australian private health insurers

We examine the technical and scale efficiency of 30 Australian private health insurers during the period 2010–2017 using data envelopment analysis (DEA). We calculate industry pure technical efficiency of 91.6 percent and scale efficiency of 95.1 percent. We also employ a two‐stage DEA truncated bootstrapped regression to model efficiency on fund and policy factors. The results show that premium restrictions and risk equalisation policies, and fund characteristics like size, but not for‐profit/not‐for‐profit status, market share and leverage, exert significant effects. The findings suggest substantial scope for regulatory reform and structural change in the Australian private health insurance industry as a means of improving its efficiency.     

盈余管理:动因及后果——兼与利润操纵的比较

盈余管理的动因有终极动因和中介动因,其根本目的是实现自身效用或公司市场价值最大化,其经济后果有弊也有利.而利润操纵完全是为了谋取私利,且不惜牺牲其他相关人的利益,故它是百害而无一利的.为促进资本市场的理性发展,应当完善相关的法律法规以对二者进行规避.     

Ownership,incentives, and the hold‐up problem

Vertical integration is often proposed as a way to resolve hold‐up problems. This ignores the empirical fact that division managers tend to maximize divisional (not firmwide) profit when investing. I develop a model with asymmetric information at the bargaining stage and investment returns taking the form of cash and “empire benefits.” Owners of a vertically integrated firm will then provide division managers with low‐powered incentives to induce them to bargain more cooperatively, resulting in higher investments and overall profit as compared with nonintegration. Vertical integration therefore mitigates hold‐up problems even without profit sharing.     

How Do Stock Markets in the US and Europe Price Efficiency Gains from Bank M&As?

This paper examines whether the stock markets price changes in operating efficiency as a result of bank mergers and if the premiums paid by the acquiring banks also reflect these changes. The sample covers mergers and acquisitions consummated in the US and Europe during the period of 1997 to 2003. Changes in cost and profit efficiency are calculated using the non-parametric Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method 1 year prior and 3 years following the merger announcement. Evidence suggests a significant relation between the announcement-period abnormal returns and the post-merger profit efficiency changes. Results also indicate that bank managers are likely to pay a higher premium for those M&A transactions that can bring about greater efficiency gains, particularly on the profit side. Further, although acquirer shareholders in the US and Europe appear to react differently to the announcement of a bank merger, our results for target shareholders suggest that regional differences might be less important than the degree of capital market development in explaining wealth effects.     

THE EVA REVOLUTION

Stern Stewart's EVA framework for financial management and incentive compensation is the practical application of both modern financial theory and classical economics to the problems of running a business. It is a fundamental way of measuring and motivating corporate performance that encourages managers to make decisions that make economic sense, even when conventional accounting-based measures of performance tell them to do otherwise. Moreover, EVA provides a consistent basis for a comprehensive system of corporate financial management—one that is capable of guiding all corporate decisions, from annual operating budgets to capital budgeting, strategic planning, and acquisitions and divestitures. It also provides companies with a "language" for communicating their goals and achievements to investors—a language that the market is increasingly coming to interpret as a sign of superior future performance.
The authors report that more than 300 companies have implemented Stern Stewart's EVA framework, including a growing number of converts in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. After describing significant behavioral changes at a number of EVA companies, the article focuses in detail on a single case history—that of auto parts manufacturer Federal-Mogul. Besides bringing about a dramatic change in the company's strategy and significant operating efficiencies, the adoption of EVA also led to an interesting change in Federal—Mogul's organizational structure—a combination of two large business units into a single profit center designed to achieve greater cooperation and synergies between the units.     

The Effects of Cash,Debt, and Insiders on Open Market Share Repurchases

The findings of the authors' recent study suggest, on balance, that stock repurchases function much like tax‐efficient special dividends, increasing when free cash flow is large and when debt levels are low, but not replacing regularly scheduled dividends. Repurchasing companies experience median event returns of about 2% around the repurchase announcements, with a related mean effect of roughly 3%. Companies with greater free cash flow and less debt are more likely than otherwise comparable companies to repurchase their shares. Furthermore, repurchasing companies that exhibit substandard preannouncement stock price returns and seek to buy back higher percentages of shares tend to elicit more positive stock price reactions. At the same time, the study provides some evidence that corporate managers attempt to use their inside information to profit from buybacks. For example, managing insiders in repurchasing firms decrease their selling activity and increase their buying activity two weeks before repurchase announcements to a greater extent than non‐managing insiders. But perhaps the most remarkable finding from this part of the study is how little insiders as a group seem to profit from their short‐term trading behavior—a finding that suggests that the market appears to anticipate much of this behavior.