Corporate Lobbying,Visibility and Accounting Conservatism

In this study, we examine the relationship between a firm's lobbying activities and financial reporting quality using a US setting where public scrutiny of corporate political activities is high. More importantly, we examine whether and how a firm's visibility shapes the relationship between its corporate lobbying activities and accounting conservatism. Adopting annual lobbying expenditure data to measure firms’ lobbying activities, and using a propensity‐score‐matching methodology to control for differences in firm characteristics between lobbying and non‐lobbying firms, we find a positive relationship between a firm's lobbying intensity and the degree of accounting conservatism in its financial reporting. We further find this positive relationship to be more pronounced in lobbying firms with a higher level of visibility. These results are robust after controlling for a firm's political connections, across various conditional conservatism measures, and across a number of visibility measures including firm size, the number of analysts following the firm, the age of the firm, the number of foreign stock exchanges that the firm is cross‐listed in, and the level of the firm's media coverage. Together, our findings add to the literature on how firms’ political activities shape their accounting practices in general, and accounting conservatism in particular. More importantly, our findings suggest that the heightened public attention paid to political activities in the US yields incentives for firms to be more conservative in their accounting practices.     

The link between performance and changes in the size and stability of a firm's officers and directors

If corporate governance works effectively, size and stability of the firm's officer/director group will be sensitive to firm performance. This should be most evident during periods of unusual firm performance and so we focus on a sample of 9817 firms drawn from 52 countries with 2001 performance measures and officer/director effects in the following 12-month period. Cross-sectional analysis indicates a positive relationship between prior period performance and changes in size and stability of the officer/director group. While the change in size relationship appears to be explained by the USA firms in the sample, the stability relationship is more broadly based. We also find that these results are sensitive to legal system with a firm's officer/director group showing greater sensitivity to past performance in common law countries.     

More than words: Can tone of consumer product reviews help predict firms’ fundamentals?

Although financial market participants are increasingly interested in the financial value of unstructured qualitative information regarding the prospects of a firm, empirical evidence remains sparse on the properties of qualitative content in consumer product reviews and their capital market implications. Using a broad sample of consumer reviews posted on Amazon.com, I examine whether the linguistic tone of aggregate consumer product reviews conveys information that is associated with firms’ sales, earnings, stock returns and risk. I find that aggregate review tone successfully predicts a firm's forthcoming quarterly sales. Moderating analyses show that this predictability is stronger for firms operating in a highly competitive environment. I further find that review tone predicts a firm's quarterly earnings surprises, abnormal stock returns and risk. A path analysis shows that the effect of review tone on stock prices is partially channeled through its effect on firms’ earnings. I finally find that negative review tone is more informative and useful than positive tone in predicting a firm's fundamentals. Importantly, these results hold after controlling for other review characteristics, including review rating, review volumeand review dispersion. Overall, my findings highlight the importance of considering the tone of consumer reviews when evaluating a firm's prospects and value.     

Comparable firms and the precision of equity valuations

I investigate the relationship between the amount of information provided by a firm's comparables (i.e., firms in the same line of business as the firm being valued) and the precision of the firm's equity valuation. When investors have more information, previous studies argue that investors can make a more precise estimate of a firm's true equity value and this implies a lower (excess) stock return volatility around corporate events such as earnings announcements. I develop a simple model that shows a negative relationship between the amount of information provided by a firm's comparables and the firm's stock return volatility. Using alternative measures of information provided by comparables and different definitions of comparables, I consistently find a negative and significant relationship between these information measures and stock return volatility, ceteris paribus.     

Does it pay to remediate? An analysis of the internal and external benefits of remediation

We examine the internal and external benefits associated with the remediation, or correction, of material weaknesses in internal controls over financial reporting. We document that firms that remediate material weaknesses exhibit higher performance and reporting quality than firms that never reported any weaknesses. These results suggest that the remediation of material weaknesses, an indication of an improved internal control system, is associated with internal benefits. Moreover, we find that remediating firms experience significantly lower audit fees and betas (i.e. external costs) than non-material weakness firms. However, these lower external costs are contingent on a firm's level of performance and information quality. These results suggest that remediation offers firms a chance to re-examine and correct their internal controls and this leads to better performance and information quality. Furthermore, external stakeholders are not necessarily swayed by remediation alone but need to observe tangible evidence of the corrected internal control system before reassessing a firm's risk downward.     

Corporate boards and regulation: The effect of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act and the exchange listing requirements on firm value

The Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 and recently modified exchange listing requirements impose uniformly high levels of outside director monitoring on all firms. However, recent research in finance suggests that corporate governance structures, including boards of directors, are chosen endogenously by firms in response to their unique operating and contracting environments. Using the relative costs and benefits of outside director monitoring as a benchmark, I find significant cross-sectional variation in the wealth effects around the announcement and passage of these regulations. I find that firms which have high monitoring-costs and fewer benefits from outside monitoring benefited less from the regulations. In particular, I find that the wealth effects around the passage of these new regulations are positively related to firm size and age, and negatively related to growth opportunities and the uncertainty of the firm's operating environment. The results suggest that a blanket “one size fits all” governance regulation maybe detrimental to certain firms, particularly young, small, growth firms operating in uncertain business environments, that are costly for outsiders to monitor.     

The impact of corporate fraud on director‐interlocked firms: Evidence from bank loans

We examine the impact of corporate fraud committed by one firm (the “fraudulent firm”) on other firms with interlocking directors (the “interlocked firms”), focusing on the debtholder side. We argue that the revelation of a fraudulent firm's fraud can damage the reputation of the interlocked firms because corporate governance can propagate via director interlocks. Empirically, we find that the interlocked firms' cost of debt is higher and the loan covenants become stricter after the fraud cases of the fraudulent firms are revealed. Consistent with the corporate governance propagation explanation, our results are weaker (stronger) for interlocked firms that have better (worse) pre‐event corporate governance standards. Our findings suggest that corporate fraud of fraudulent firms can affect other firms through director‐interlocks beyond shareholder value.     

Financial reporting quality and corporate innovation

This paper examines the relationship of financial reporting to corporate innovation. Given the importance of a high‐quality information system and coordination to innovation, I predict a positive association between financial reporting quality and future innovation. My empirical evidence is consistent with this prediction. I also find some evidence that the positive association between financial reporting quality and innovation is more pronounced for firms with intensive internal research and development activities and for firms in competitive industries. The main findings are robust to using an instrumental variable approach as well as controlling for alternative explanations. I find that firms with high‐quality financial reporting transform investment inputs into greater innovation outcomes and firm value. This study provides additional insight into the role of financial reporting quality and its relation to the real economy.     

The association between human resource investment in IT controls over financial reporting and investment efficiency

This study investigates the association between human resource investment in information technology (IT) controls over financial reporting and its investment efficiency. To conduct the analysis, it uses novel hand-collected data on the number of IT control personnel. In particular, it uses the ratio of (1) the number of IT control personnel, (2) the number of IT control personnel who are certified public accountants to the total number of employees in a firm, and (3) the natural logarithm of average working experience of IT control personnel in months as a proxy for human resource investment in IT controls. This study finds that such investment is negatively associated with the firm's abnormal investment, suggesting that investing in IT control personnel enhances a firm's investment efficiency. Furthermore, not only quantitative but also qualitative investment in IT control personnel improves investment efficiency. We also find that the association between human resource investment in IT controls and a firm's investment efficiency is more pronounced for firms with lower financial reporting quality and information environment. The results of this study provide useful implications for management, regulators, and market participants, as they demonstrate the positive role of investment in IT control personnel on the firm's internal decision.     

The information content of director trading: Evidence from acquisition announcements in Australia

In response to the long-standing debate about the information content of director trading, this study investigates the implications of director stock trading before an acquisition announcement by the company. Using a sample of 1249 acquisition announcements made by Australian acquiring firms between 2003 and 2012, we find that the stocks of acquiring firms with net director sales tend to underperform those of acquiring firms with net director purchases or with no director trades. This evidence supports the notion that director trading conveys useful information about the quality of subsequent acquisitions. Further, the informational effect of net director sales is most pronounced for acquisitions where the method of payment is stock, implying that the acquiring firm's stock may be overvalued.     

The Relation Between Reporting Quality and Financing and Investment: Evidence from Changes in Financing Capacity

We use changes in the value of a firm's real estate assets as an exogenous change in a firm's financing capacity to examine (1) the relation between reporting quality and financing and investment conditional on this change, and (2) firms’ reporting quality responses to the change in financing capacity. We find that financing and investment by firms with higher reporting quality is less affected by changes in real estate values than are financing and investment by firms with lower reporting quality. Further, firms increase reporting quality in response to decreases in financing capacity. Our findings contribute to the literature on reporting quality and investment, and on the determinants of reporting quality choices.     

Effect of Governance Characteristics on the State of the Firm after an Initial Public Offering

I examine firm characteristics available to investors at a firm's initial public offering date to determine whether they predict the firm's survival, acquisition, or failure. Firms survive more often than they are acquired when they are venture‐backed, the chief executive officer is the original founder, and an outside blockholder is present. The presence of an outside director does not increase the probability of survival. Firms that are more likely to survive than fail include large firms and those with longer board tenure.     

Firm incentives,institutional complexity and the quality of “harmonized” accounting numbers

In this paper, we investigate how firm reporting incentives and institutional factors affect accounting quality in firms from 26 countries. We exploit a unique multicountry setting where firms are required to comply with the same set of international reporting standards. We develop an approach of cross-country comparisons allowing for differences between firms within a country and we investigate the relative importance of country- versus firm-specific factors in explaining accounting quality. We find that financial reporting quality increases in the presence of strong monitoring mechanisms by means of ownership concentration, analyst scrutiny, effective auditing, external financing needs, and leverage. Instability of business operations, existence of losses, and lack of transparent disclosure negatively affect the quality of accounting information. At the country level, we observe better accounting quality for firms from regulatory environments with stronger institutions, higher levels of economic development, greater business sophistication, and more globalized markets. More importantly, we find that firm-specific incentives play a greater role in explaining accounting quality than countrywide factors. This evidence suggests that institutional factors shape the firm's specific incentives that influence reporting quality. Our findings support the view that the global adoption of a single set of accounting standards in isolation is not likely to lead to more comparable and transparent financial statements unless the institutional conditions and the firm-specific reporting incentives also change.     

How do firms finance their investments?: The relative importance of equity issuance and debt contracting costs

This paper examines the financing decisions of firms in response to changes in investments and profits. We find that information frictions play important roles in firms' financing decisions. However, we find no evidence that asymmetric information about the value of a firm's assets causes equity to be used only as a last resort. Indeed equity is the predominant source of finance in situations, such as profit shortfalls, investment in intangible assets, and internally generated growth opportunities, where informational asymmetries and agency costs are likely to be high. We also find that firms respond asymmetrically to positive and negative profit shocks. In financing fixed assets, high asymmetric information firms use more short-term debt and less long-term debt, whereas firms with high potential agency problems use significantly more equity and less long-term debt and cash.     

Asymmetric Information and Risky Debt Maturity Choice

When capital market investors and firm insiders possess the same information about a company's prospects, its liabilities will be priced in a way that makes the firm indifferent to the composition of its financial liabilities (at least under certain, well-known circumstances). However, if firm insiders are systematically better informed than outside investors, they will choose to issue those types of securities that the market appears to overvalue most. Knowing this, rational investors will try to infer the insiders' information from the firm's financial structure. This paper evaluates the extent to which a firm's choice of risky debt maturity can signal insiders' information about firm quality. If financial market transactions are costless, a firm's financial structure cannot provide a valid signal. With positive transaction costs, however, high-quality firms can sometimes effectively signal their true quality to the market. The existence of a signalling equilibrium is shown to depend on the (exogenous) distribution of firms' quality and the magnitude of underwriting costs for corporate debt.     

Financial reporting quality and dividend policy: New evidence from an international level

This study examines the link between financial reporting quality and dividend payout across 76 countries. We find that financial reporting quality increases dividend payout after controlling for firm and country specifics. We also investigate different channels that moderate the relation between financial reporting quality and dividend payout. We find that the positive association between high-quality financial reporting and dividend payout is more pronounced when firms have free cash flow problems, face severe information asymmetry, and are located in countries with weaker minority shareholder protection rights. Interestingly, we find evidence that high reporting quality enhances firms' payment of dividend even when these firms already overpaying their shareholders. However, the relation becomes weaker when firms overpass the optimal level of dividend payout. The findings remain consistent after several robustness checks, thus highlighting the effectiveness of more transparent disclosure of financial information in reducing information asymmetry related to firms' internal agency costs and their relationships with external parties.     

Peer effects in corporate disclosure decisions

This study examines peer effects in corporate disclosure decisions. Peer effects suggest that the average behavior of a group influences the behavior of individual group members. Consistent with peer effects, I find that disclosures made by industry peers induce firm disclosure. Peer effects in disclosure are more pronounced when a firm's strategic uncertainty is higher, indicating that peer firm disclosure reduces the external uncertainty arising from the firm's interaction with its industry peers and thus increases the precision of managerial private information. I also find that peer effects are stronger when a firm's dependence on external financing is greater, suggesting that peer firm disclosure increases the costs on firm visibility and reputation in capital markets. Overall, these findings suggest that peer firm disclosure shapes a firm's information environment.     

Does it pay to be socially connected with wall street brokerages? Evidence from cost of equity

We show that social connections between a firm's executives and directors and brokerages that follow the firm decrease the firm's cost of equity. We use quasi-natural experiments to address endogeneity concerns and find that the uncovered effect of firm-brokerage social connections on cost of equity is likely causal. The effect is found to be more pronounced for firms with more soft information, opaque information environments, tight financial constraints, weak corporate monitoring, or high executive equity ownership. Further, consistent with the evidence on cost of equity, we find that firm-brokerage social connections reduce SEO underpricing, decrease information asymmetry in stock markets, and improve the firm's equity valuation.     

The impact of central bank digital currency variation on firm's implied volatility

The paper investigates whether a firm's implied volatility is affected by the volatility of central bank digital currencies. Our sample covers 2853 listed companies in the United States from 2014 to 2018. First, we find the variation of central bank digital currency has a positive impact on a firm’s implied volatility. Second, the healthier firms’ conditions can reduce the relationship between central bank digital currency variation and a firm’s implied volatility. Third, the positive relation between central bank digital currency and firm’s implied volatility still exists in investment-grade, speculative-grade, and unrated firms. Finally, to eliminate the endogeneity problem, we adopt simultaneous equation models (SEM) and find our results are still robust after excluding endogenous concerns. Our research provides a reminder for corporate managers and new implications for policymakers.     

Corporate capital structure and the characteristics of suppliers and customers

We investigate the link between a firm's leverage and the characteristics of its suppliers and customers. Specifically, we examine whether firms use decreased leverage as a commitment mechanism to induce suppliers/customers to undertake relationship-specific investments. We find that the firm's leverage is negatively related to the R&D intensities of its suppliers and customers. We also find lower debt levels for firms operating in industries in which strategic alliances and joint ventures with firms in supplier and customer industries are more prevalent. Consistent with a bargaining role for debt, we find a positive relation between firm debt level and the degree of concentration in supplier/customer industries.