Disability and accounting firms: Evidence from the UK

An accumulation of interpretative studies in a range of international contexts has considered gender, race and social class in accounting employment. However, no work has considered accounting firms’ attitudes towards employing disabled people. This omission is surprising given the passing of successive disability rights legislation in the United States since 1918 and the United Kingdom (UK) since 1944 and consequent changes in public expectations regarding equal employment opportunities for disabled people. This paper examines the UK accounting profession's response to changes in disability legislation. Using a survey administered to UK firms and an analysis of the Big Four firms’ 2003 UK annual reviews, we report that firms’ have a minimal understanding of disability, that disability is not a significant component of firms’ personnel policies, that firms lag behind other organizations in their attitudes to disability, and images of disability are wholly absent from firms’ annual reviews. We discuss these findings in the context of prior accounting research which considers gender, race and social class, which is used to develop a research agenda.     

Does accounting comparability affect corporate employment decision-making?

This paper investigates whether accounting comparability affects corporate employment decision-making. We find that firms with greater accounting comparability experience a lower degree of inefficiency in labour investments. Further, our results show that accounting comparability affects labour investments via improved external monitoring and internal governance mechanisms. Additional analyses indicate that our findings are not driven by non-labour investments and are robust to alternative explanations and endogeneity concerns. Collectively, the results are consistent with the view that comparability is an effective monitoring tool, which mitigates agency conflict and thereby reduces opportunistic employment decision-making.     

The Determinants and Value Relevance of the Choice of Accounting for Research and Development Expenditures in the United Kingdom

Abstract:  This paper investigates the determinants and value relevance implications of the accounting method choice for development expenditures for firms with research and development (R&D) programs in the United Kingdom (UK). Using a sample of 3,229 UK firm-year observations over the period 1996–2004, I find that the decision to expense versus capitalize development expenditures is influenced by earnings variability, earnings sign, firm size, R&D intensity, leverage, steady-state status of the firm's R&D program, and R&D program success. Additional results indicate that there is little difference in value relevance between reported and adjusted numbers for both the Expensers and the Capitalizers. The evidence in this paper suggests that managers choose the 'correct' method for accounting for R&D in order to best communicate the private information which they hold.     

Determinants and consequences of timely asset impairments during the financial crisis

U.S. firms recorded an unprecedented number of asset impairments during the recent financial crisis. We investigate the timing of these losses in the context of two competing views on how firms use discretion over asset impairments. The first view posits that firms record impairments to convey private information as part of their commitment to a conditionally conservative reporting strategy. The second view argues that firms use their discretion to report opportunistically by delaying the recording of bad news. Consistent with the first view, we find that firms recorded timelier asset impairments during the financial crisis if they reported more conservatively in the five years preceding the crisis. Further tests show this relation is greater for firms with strong corporate governance, industry‐specialist auditors, and high leverage, indicating the importance of monitoring mechanisms in determining how firms handle the discretion involved in impairment decisions. We also test for the consequences of timely asset impairments during the financial crisis and find that firms reporting conservatively both before and during the crisis were able to acquire more debt financing, and their publicly traded bonds suffered smaller increases in illiquidity. Collectively, our study highlights the role of asset impairments in firms’ accounting choices over time.     

Competitive pressure and firm investment efficiency: Evidence from corporate employment decisions

This study examines the link between product market competition and labour investment efficiency. We find that competitive pressure distorts the efficiency of corporate employment decisions by creating an underinvestment problem. This finding withstands a battery of robustness checks and remains unchanged after accounting for endogeneity concerns. Additional analysis shows that the relationship between product market competition and labour investment efficiency is stronger for firms facing higher competitive threats, greater financial constraints, higher information asymmetry and higher labour adjustment costs. Our results suggest that as competition increases bankruptcy risk, it leads managers to underinvest in labour to avoid incurring labour-related costs.     

中国残疾人口就业存在的问题、影响因素与解决的基本思路

作为弱势群体主要组成部分的残疾人,其就业是残疾人事业的核心任务,但是中国残疾人口不仅数量大,而且结构还具有多样性特征.基于中国第二次全国残疾人抽样调查数据,本文首先分析了残疾人就业存在的诸多问题,然后阐述了影响残疾人就业的主要因素,在论述促进残疾人就业对于建设全面和谐的小康社会具有十分重要的积极意义的基础上,提出了解决中国残疾人就业的基本政策思路.     

Corporate employment,red flags,and audit effort

U.S. regulatory agencies and congressional oversight committees have expressed concerns that auditors often neglect red flags embedded in the operating characteristics of firms that misstate their financial reports. This study examines whether labor employment decisions, a major part of a firm’s operations, help predict accounting improprieties and consequently play a role in audit planning and pricing. We find that negative abnormal employment changes are associated with a higher likelihood of subsequent financial restatements, accounting irregularities, and lawsuits related to accounting fraud, and generally require greater effort from auditors as manifested by higher audit fees and longer audit report lags. Positive abnormal employment changes are associated with subsequent restatements and longer audit report lags, but not associated with fraud or audit fees. Taken together, the results are consistent with auditors recognizing the individual misstatement risks pertaining to companies’ employment decisions. These results suggest that standard setters, regulators, and practitioners should devote more attention to operational statistics to identify potential red flags.     

Empirical evidence on factors significant for employment in government accounting

The primary objective of this study is to investigate the perceptions of government agencies regarding the importance of selected job characteristics in entry-level accountants. We collected our data with a survey instrument which contained detailed questions on appearance, education, extracurricular activities, performance, and personality. Our sample consisted of federal agencies with a known proclivity to hire accounting graduates. In addition, for comparative purposes we also sampled the 11 largest U.S. public accounting firms. We mailed the instrument to both the treatment and the control group of firms. Our results indicated that a number of achievement, personality, and social factors were particularly important to each employer group. Interoccupational comparisons revealed minimal overlap in the factors of particular significance to both federal agency and public accounting firm recruiters. These findings suggest that different knowledge, skills, and personality traits might be crucial to students seeking employment with federal agencies as opposed to large public accounting firms.     

Modelling Transparency in Disclosure: The Case of Foreign Exchange Risk Management

Abstract:  When managers choose not to disclose all the relevant information in their possession in their financial statements, there is an information gap between the managers and users and consequently a lack of transparency. We model the degree of transparency observed when disclosures of foreign exchange (FX) risk management in financial statements are compared to managerial information on FX risk management policy, as evidenced in questionnaire responses. In this comparative study of US and UK firms we find incomplete disclosure in both samples but with differing aspects. In the US case, the information gap is lower where the information has higher relevance or firms with higher financial risk (greater leverage) are signalling the extent of risk, but the gap is greater where firms are in competitive product markets. For the UK sample, the information gap is significantly lower where firms have higher financial risk or higher liquidity but the gap is greater where the shares are more closely held. We conclude that modelling and explaining this aspect of incomplete accounting disclosure in an international setting must be sufficiently flexible to accommodate national differences in managerial behaviour.     

Litigation reform,accounting discretion,and the cost of equity

In this paper, we isolate a context – the 1995 Public Securities Litigation Reform Act – where information risk (accruals quality) is likely to change, and investigate whether the increase in accounting discretion associated with litigation reform is viewed by investors as basically opportunistic (i.e., as distorting reported earnings) or as improving the ability of reported earnings to reflect economic value. We measure accounting discretion using both positive (i.e., income-increasing) as well as absolute performance-adjusted abnormal accruals. Our analysis focuses on a constant sample of firms over a 10-year (1992–2001) period, and is structured in two stages. In the first-stage, we utilize an instrumental variable technique that isolates the increase in accounting discretion associated with the 1995 Act. In the second-stage, we relate the predicted increase in accounting discretion associated with litigation reform – obtained from the first-stage regression – to the ex ante equity risk premium for Big N audit clients. Our results suggest that the increase in accounting discretion associated with the 1995 Act was viewed by investors as basically opportunistic. Further, the exogenous nature of the 1995 Act suggests that the observed increase (and pricing) of accounting discretion is related to litigation reform rather than some omitted firm-specific operating characteristic. Overall, our findings suggest that litigation reform affects firm value through managers’ exercise of accounting discretion and cost of equity capital channels.     

中国上市公司会计差错的动因分析

本文以 1999- 2 0 0 1年的年度财务报表中出现“会计差错更正”的A股上市公司为样本 ,研究了高报盈余的会计差错的动因。研究表明 ,高报盈余的会计差错有着明显的盈余管理的动机 ,当期利润低于上期 ,有较高的资产负债率 ,线下项目产生的收益高以及规模小和亏损的公司更容易产生高报盈余的错误。本文的研究发展了盈余管理研究的内容 ,为监管部门加强监管、防范上市公司操纵盈余、提高会计信息质量提供了经验证据     

Accounting Regulation in Malta

This paper considers the development of accounting rules in Malta, and traces the changing de jure requirement of a ‘true and fair view’ (TFV) in national legislation. This is done in three phases. The initial phase discusses financial reporting issues arising from the then ambiguous TFV wording in the Companies Act 1995. The changing TFV wording is compared to the UK Companies Act 1948 and to the European Community Directives being the basis of national company legislation. Due to the ever-increasing conflicts between IFRS and national legislation, ways how the local accounting profession has applied the TFV principle are then illustrated. The impact on the audit reports, arising from implementation of the IAS Regulation (1606/2002/EC) is discussed in the second phase. It is found that the IAS Regulation brought about a lack of clarity as to the applicable regulatory financial reporting framework for listed entities. In the third phase, the practical difficulties and issues that led to the recent development of a national financial reporting standard for smaller entities are examined in an international context. The possible implications of a second de jure imposition of a TFV, in this national standard, are put forward.     

Examining the Patterns of Goodwill Impairments in Europe and the US

We examine the patterns of goodwill impairments in Europe and in the US over the period from 2006 to 2015, for a sample of more than 35,000 firm-year observations. We define the timeliness of goodwill impairments as the frequency of accounting impairments conditional to indications of economic impairments. We measure indications of economic impairment with three metrics: equity market value minus equity book value less than goodwill, market-to-book smaller than one and negative earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA). Our research strategy leads us to draw very different conclusions than those in the recent EFRAG (2016) study. While median levels of goodwill on the books between US and European firms are relatively similar, we find several indications that US firms recognise timelier impairments, at least during 2008 and 2009, that is, the early years of the financial crisis. We further document that US impairers write down a much greater percentage of their beginning balance of goodwill than European impairers. During the financial crisis, the median level of impairment by US firms was 63% of opening goodwill in 2008 and 40% in 2009, whereas median European write-downs were only 6% and 7% of opening goodwill, respectively. Even though European firms are more likely to impair over multiple years, the cumulative impairments never come close to the level of US firms, be it in a single year or cumulative over multiple years. We also find that the frequency of accounting impairment is small compared to the number of firms presenting evidence of economic impairment: only 20–25% of firms recognise impairments depending on the measure of economic impairment. This has often been interpreted by academics as a sign of untimely write-offs. Accounting differences between US Generally Accepted Accounting Principles and International Financial Reporting Standards are unlikely to explain our results. One caveat of our analysis is that it does not allow us to draw conclusions on whether the observed differences between US and European firms are driven by differences in conditional conservatism and/or big bath accounting practices.     

The decision relevance and timeliness of accounting earnings in Saudi Arabia

This study examines the decision relevance and timeliness of accounting earnings in Saudi Arabia during the 1995-1999 sample period. The empirical results suggest that the publication of accounting earnings does not cause significant revision to the market assessment of future cash flows of Saudi firms. On the other hand, it appears that the publication of accounting earnings leads individual investors to revise their security holdings. However, this evidence is limited to cases where firms reported profit. The empirical results further suggest that earnings are timely in terms of their association with security returns and that increasing the measurement interval significantly improves this association. The tests also show that positive and negative earnings have differential implications for the timeliness of accounting earnings. Further tests show that this evidence is not consistent with the loss liquidation argument [J. Account. Econ. 20 (1995) 125] and, potentially, may reflect the lack of tax incentives to liquidate investments in loss firms. Finally, the results show that Saudi managers do not incorporate economic losses into accounting earnings on a timely basis which may reflect reduced market demand for accounting information, low levels of public debt, low expected litigation costs, and weak monitoring by analysts and other stakeholders.     

Evidence on the role of accounting conservatism in monitoring managers’ investment decisions

Watts (2003), among others, argues that conservatism helps in corporate governance by mitigating agency problems associated with managers’ investment decisions. We hypothesize that if conservatism reduces managers’ex ante incentives to take on negative net present value projects and improves the ex post monitoring of investments, firms with more conservative accounting ought to have higher future profitability and lower likelihood (and magnitude) of future special items charges. Consistent with this expectation, we find that firms with more conservative accounting have (i) higher future cash flows and gross margins and (ii) lower likelihood and magnitude of special items charges than firms with less conservative accounting.     

残疾人就业影响因素研究文献综述

近年来,国家对残疾人就业的重视程度越来越高,但是针对性的学术研究成果很少,研究影响残疾人就业的因素,是未来残疾人就业问题研究中不可或缺的部分。本文通过文献计量学方法对相关文献进行全面研究,分析了残疾人就业问题研究的现状,指出要运用多视角、按残分类的研究方法,并且不断地提升研究过程的科学性和实效性;其次运用内容分析法从定性研究的视角对学者观点进行归纳整理,掌握当前影响残疾人就业因素的主要研究方向及其成果;最后,简要评析目前研究影响残疾人就业因素研究过程中存在的不足并进一步提出研究展望,为后续研究影响残疾人就业的因素的学者提供有效的参考。     

Accounting conservatism and common ownership by dedicated institutional blockholders

We examine the peer effects of accounting conservatism in a common dedicated institutional blockholder (CDIB) setting. We find a positive correlation in accounting conservatism between focal firms and their CDIB peers. To corroborate our main findings, we document that the peer effect is stronger for firms connected through CDIBs that are activists or that have more active shares, for firms with larger CDIB ownership and for firms with weaker corporate governance mechanisms and higher information asymmetry. The results suggest that managers view following peer firms’ conservatism as a way of pleasing CDIBs. We also find that in proxy voting, firms receive less support from their investors when their conservatism deviates more from their CDIB peers. Finally, we find that the CDIB peer effect remains significant after controlling for the effect of industry and local peers. Overall, our paper presents evidence consistent with firms adapting their accounting conservatism in response to their incumbent dedicated institutional investors’ preference.     

Tax planning,corporate governance and equity value

Tax planning by firms is a highly significant activity. After audit fees, tax related services are the largest source of fee income for UK accounting firms. When viewed in terms of its impact, tax planning is the major source of the corporation tax gap amongst large firms (HMRC, 2010). Although traditionally tax planning has been viewed as benefiting shareholders via increased after tax earnings, more recently the underlying motivation has been questioned. Desai and Dharmapala (2006) argue that when an information asymmetry exists between managers and shareholders with respect to tax planning, it can facilitate managers acting in their own interests resulting in a negative association between tax planning and firm value. Using a sample of UK quoted firms from 2005 to 2007 and data drawn from International Accounting Standard 12 Income Taxes (IASB, 2010) Effective Tax Rate (ETR) reconciliations, this paper reports such a negative relationship. Further, the relationship is robust to the inclusion of corporate governance measures which could be expected to moderate the potential implications of a tax related shareholder–manager information asymmetry. An innovation of this paper is in using the ETR reconciliations to examine sub-categories of tax planning activities. The paper contributes to the debate of who determines, and benefits from tax planning conducted by firms. Its findings have direct policy relevance for shareholders and tax administrations in monitoring and controlling firms’ tax planning activities.     

The Impact of Audit Quality Indicators on the Timeliness of Goodwill Impairments: Evidence from the German Setting

This study investigates whether goodwill impairments are perceived as timely and whether specific auditor characteristics affect the perceived timeliness. It therefore contributes to central questions in accounting research: is managerial discretion over accounting numbers (accounting choice) good or bad for stakeholders and does audit quality have an impact on this relationship? It is motivated by the IASB's post-implementation review on business combinations and the Goodwill and Impairment project based on it, the ongoing debate on the decision usefulness of impairment testing, and the question whether auditors have an impact on firms’ reporting of impairment losses. Based on a sample of German listed firms for the period 2006 to 2013, the results indicate that goodwill impairments are not recognized in a timely manner and delayed by at least one to two years. Moreover, the findings suggest that the recognition of impairment losses is influenced by auditor characteristics. In particular, firms seem to report goodwill impairments in a more timely fashion when they are audited by a Big 4 auditor, whereas the timeliness seems to decrease with a higher non-audit fee ratio and a longer auditor tenure. Moreover, additional analyses indicate that higher audit fees lead to more timely impairments.     

Estimating the Equity Risk Premium Using Accounting Fundamentals

This study uses recent developments in the theoretical modelling of the links between unrecorded accounting goodwill, accounting profitability and the cost of equity, together with Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) betas, to estimate the ex-ante equity risk premium in the UK. The results suggest that, over our sample period from 1968 to 1995, the premium has been in the region of 5%. Our estimate lends support to the view that the ex-ante equity risk premium is substantially less than the historical average of the excess of equity returns over the risk-free rate, and is similar to the rates applied recently by UK competition regulators.