Timeliness of Reporting and Earnings Information Transfers

This study examines earnings timeliness and its effect on earnings information transfers. Empirical analyses focus on a sample of approximately fifteen hundred earnings reports and nearly four thousand information transfers. The principal findings are: (1) earlier earnings releases yield negative information transfers, (2) earnings releases yield negative (nominal) information transfers to firms that previously (subsequently) release their earnings reports, and (3) earlier earnings releases yield negative information transfers to firms that have not yet disclosed earnings. These findings show that the timing of earnings reports has significant and far-reaching economic consequences.     

Corporate Financial Reporting in Nigeria

This paper reports on the extent of financial reporting by a sample of publicly quoted companies in Nigeria. Rather than examine the disclosure of specific items of information, the paper deals with the entire contents of the corporate annual report and highlights its different parts. The index of disclosure methodology is used to describe the trend of reporting practices between 1982 and 1986.     

Raising Finance and Firms' Corporate Reporting Policies

The major purpose of a corporate annual report is to convey information about the company's affairs to outside parties. The information can be used both to monitor agency relationships (Jensen and Meckling [25]; Watts [32]) and to provide inputs into user decision models (e.g. Altman [3]). Until recently, however, very little research had been conducted into annual reports in the U.K. and hence little was known about their effectiveness. This has been remedied, to some extent, in the last few years and there is now a growing body of literature relating to annual reports. For example, the major professional British accounting bodies commissioned a study to examine'the scope and aims of published financial reports in the light of modern needs and conditions'. This resulted in the publication of The Corporate Report (ASSC [1]), a document which recommended a number of radical changes. Other studies have investigated the degree of understanding of annual reports by private shareholders (Lee and Tweedie [26]), the degree of consensus about the usefulness of annual report data (Firth [21]), the actual degree of disclosure by British companies (Firth [22, 23]), and the impact of accounting information on share prices (see Firth [20]).¹ The purpose of this paper is to add to the literature by reporting the results of an empirical study which examined one aspect of the corporate reporting policies of British firms, namely the changes in the quality and extent of voluntary financial disclosure when raising finance in the stock market.     

环境管制、行业属性与企业环保投资

政府环境管制如何影响企业的环保投资行为?企业环保投资行为是否具有行业差异?对上述问题的回答有助于更好地了解企业环保投资活动的特点、明确政府环境管制与行业管制的有效性。基于中国A股上市公司的经验数据,本文研究发现:我国上市公司普遍存在环保投资额不足的现象,环保投资对企业来说是一种"被动"行为;政府环境管制强度与企业环保投资规模之间呈"U"型关系,即环境管制对企业环保投资行为的影响存在"门槛效应",企业环保投资行为更多地体现出"被动"迎合政府环境管制需要的特征;重污染行业企业比非重污染行业企业投入了更大规模的环保资金。本文的研究成果既拓展了企业投资研究的视野,又丰富了环境管理会计方面的学术文献。     

The Challenge of Risk Reporting: Regulatory and Corporate Responses

Corporate collapses such as those of Ansett Australia, Centaur Mining, Enron, HIH and One. Tel have rekindled regulators' concerns about the lack of transparency in financial reporting on risks and uncertainties. This paper examines the broad conceptual issues and regulatory responses so far in leading jurisdictions and investigates risk reporting of Australian entities operating in the mining sector. The limited and uneven level of reporting on risk found, in this study, if replicated in other industries and jurisdictions, provides justification for standard-setters considering more explicit requirements than the existing piecemeal rules of restricted scope.     

Environmental and Social Matters in Mandatory Corporate Reporting: An Academic Note

This note provides an overview of mandatory corporate reporting for environmental and social matters in Canada, the United States and the EU. When researchers and educators consider reporting on these matters, they often look to voluntary corporate reporting. However, we argue that a lot of related information exists in companies’ mandatory reports, either in the disclosures dictated by securities regulators, or via other required channels. Our objective is threefold. First, to describe what currently exists regarding mandatory reporting on environmental and social matters (to inform). Second, to discuss several of the current ongoing debates regarding such reporting (to encourage discourse). Third, to encourage research into the mandatory reporting of environmental and social matters.     

Corporate Social Reporting: A Rebuttal of Legitimacy Theory

Various rationales have been advanced to explain the phenomenon of corporate social reporting. Among these has been legitimacy theory which posits that corporate disclosures are made as reactions to environmental factors and in order to legitimise corporate actions. This paper reports the results of an historical analysis of social disclosures in 100 years of annual reporting by a dominant corporation in the Australian mining/manufacturing industry. A variable but significant pattern of social reporting is identified and compared with an earlier study of social reporting by US Steel. The results of this study fail to confirm legitimacy theory as the primary explanation for social reporting in the Australian case.     

基于可持续发展理念的企业整合报告研究

在强调社会责任和可持续发展的环境下,企业传统财务报告已无法满足信息使用者的需求,对其深化改革并尝试发布整合财务、环境、社会责任和公司治理信息的报告已成为未来的发展趋势.基于以上背景,国际会计界提出了“整合报告”的新概念,并于2010年8月成立了一个致力于发展整合报告框架及编制标准的国际整合报告委员会(IIRC).然而,目前企业整合报告的理论和实践还处于初创阶段,本文在关注IIRC和世界各国研究动态的基础上,通过理论探索和实证检验,首创性地提出了FESG四维报告作为企业整合报告基本形式的观点,并运用问卷调查和AHP层次分析法构建了FESG报告的初步框架,建议企业更为关注可持续发展和价值创造能力等战略问题.     

严格遵守会计准则提供高质量财务报告认真履行社会责任

财务报告具有决策有用和受托责任双重目标以及公共产品的特征,属于企业对社会承担的法律责任,因此高质量的财务报告意义重大。本文基于上市公司和各类非上市企业执行财会[2009]16号文件的背景,从财务报告的编报、内控规范的落实、会计师事务所的整合以及加强财务报告的监督检查等几个方面,对企业遵守会计准则、提高财务报告质量和履行社会责任提出个人看法。     

Corporate Equity Ownership and the Governance of Product Market Relationships

We assemble a sample of over 10,000 customer–supplier relationships and determine whether the customer owns equity in the supplier. We find that factors related to both contractual incompleteness and financial market frictions are important in the decision of a customer firm to take an equity stake in their supplier. Evidence on the variation in the size of observed equity positions suggests that there are limits to the size of optimal ownership stakes in many relationships. Finally, we find that relationships accompanied by equity ownership last significantly longer than other relationships, suggesting that ownership aids in bonding trading parties together.     

公司财务会计与报告架构:美国模式的剖析和启示

本文试图从公司财务会计与报告价值链、公司会计信息供应链的角度 ,提出一个整合性的概念———公司财务会计与报告架构 (corporatefinancialaccounting&reportingregime) ,并以此为基点剖析美国公司财务会计与报告架构的演进 ,尤其是“安然事件”之后这一架构的变迁 ,在深入分析的基础上得出一些对我国当前会计改革有借鉴意义和参考价值的启示。     

Corporate Hedging: The Relevance of Contract Specifications and Banking Relationships

This article examines the contribution of hedging to firm valueand the cost of hedging in a unified framework. Optimal hedgingand firm value are explicitly linked to firm risk, the typeof debt covenants and the relative priority of the hedging contract.It is shown that in some cases hedging is possible only if thecounterparty to the forward contract also holds a significantportion of the debt. Also, the spread in the hedging contractreduces the optimal amount of hedging to less than the minimum-variancehedge ratio. Among other results this article elucidates whysome firms hedge using forward contracts while other firms hedgein the futures markets, as well as why higher priority forwardcontracts are more efficient hedging vehicles. JEL Classificationnumbers: G13, G22 and G33.     

Corporate Equity Ownership, Strategic Alliances, and Product Market Relationships

This paper examines long-term block ownership by corporations and performance changes in firms with corporate block owners. We also examine potential reasons for corporate ownership including benefits in product market relationships, alleviation of financing constraints, and board monitoring by corporate owners. We find the largest significant increases in targets' stock prices, investment, and operating profitability when ownership is combined with alliances, joint ventures, and other product market relationships between purchasing and target firms, especially in industries with high research and development. Our findings are consistent with the conclusion that block ownership by corporations has significant benefits in product market relationships.     

Corporate Hedging: The Relevance of Contract Specifications and Banking Relationships

This article examines the contribution of hedging to firm value and the cost of hedging in a unified framework. Optimal hedging and firm value are explicitly linked to firm risk, the type of debt covenants and the relative priority of the hedging contract. It is shown that in some cases hedging is possible only if the counterparty to the forward contract also holds a significant portion of the debt. Also, the spread in the hedging contract reduces the optimal amount of hedging to less than the minimum-variance hedge ratio. Among other results this article elucidates why some firms hedge using forward contracts while other firms hedge in the futures markets, as well as why higher priority forward contracts are more efficient hedging vehicles.