Reciprocal and Non-Reciprocal Transactions: The FASB's Stock-Based Compensation Project

Whether the FASB's conceptual framework can be used to derive accounting treatments has been debated. Mozes (1998) argued that the conceptual framework's high level of abstraction meant that several alternative views were possible for the treatment of stock-based compensation and that this was unhelpful. This article identifies a problem at the abstract level of the conceptual framework that requires resolution before Mozes' proposals to remedy the high level of abstraction may be acted upon—the inappropriateness of the conceptual framework's distinction between liabilities and equity. The conceptual framework is clear that equity transactions are non-reciprocal but the accounting treatment to be derived from this view is unacceptable and was not presented as an option in the stock-based compensation project. Instead, the FASB's basis for conclusions is based on reciprocal transactions, disguising the inappropriateness of the conceptual framework's definitions. Failure to revise the conceptual framework leaves the FASB, and other standard-setting bodies drawing on the FASB's concepts, open to developing serious inconsistencies in other pro-jects where the distinction between liabilities and equity is important, and without conceptual support for their stance on stock-based compensation.     

Tax Expense Momentum

We investigate the joint hypothesis that (1) tax expense contains information about core profitability that is incremental to reported earnings and (2) that information is reflected in stock prices with a delay. We find that seasonally differenced quarterly tax expense, our proxy for tax expense surprise, is related positively to future returns. This anomaly is separate from previously documented pricing anomalies based on financial and tax variables. Additional investigation reveals that tax expense surprise is related positively to changes in future quarterly earnings and tax expense, and both those future changes are related positively to future returns. While the returns to investing in predictable future earnings changes has been documented before, these results suggest that predicting changes in future tax expense also generates incremental future returns.     

The Earnings Implications of Pension Expense

Abstract

Recent challenges to the actuarial pension model and a movement to harmonize international accounting standards both suggest that the current Canadian standards for pension accounting, CICA 3461, may see substantial revision during upcoming years. To understand better the implications of these possible accounting changes, this paper presents the results of a stochastic analysis that quantifies how the volatility of pension expense for a sample of ten Canadian companies sponsoring defined benefit plans will be increased by the adoption of immediate recognition accounting. For certain companies this increase is significant and is shown to have a material earnings impact. The implications of this earnings volatility for the future of defined benefit pension plans are also explored.     

Asset Pricing Implications of Firms' Financing Constraints

We use a production-based asset pricing model to investigatewhether financing constraints are quantitatively important forthe cross-section of returns. Specifically, we use GMM to explorethe stochastic Euler equation imposed on returns by optimalinvestment. Our methods can identify the impact of financialfrictions on the stochastic discount factor with cyclical variationsin cost of external funds. We find that financing frictionsprovide a common factor that improves the pricing of cross-sectionalreturns. Moreover, the shadow cost of external funds exhibitsstrong procyclical variation, so that financial frictions aremore important in relatively good economic conditions. (JELE22, E44, G12)     

财务报告问询函压力与企业金融化

企业遭遇非处罚性监管后,在金融资产配置上会作何调整以适应压力情境下自身的投融资需要呢?本文基于交易所发放财务报告问询函的实证研究发现:财务报告问询函会提升上市公司金融资产配置水平,并且短期金融资产增长更快.进一步,问询函中即使涉及金融资产问题,企业金融化水平仍会提高;压力情境下,企业金融化内在的真实动机在于发挥蓄水池作用,融资约束发挥了部分中介机制.最后,遭遇问询的实体企业通过盲目的金融化并没有改善整体业绩,却损害了未来主营业绩.本文从企业金融化视角对非处罚性监管的经济后果研究形成有益补充,同时对强化证券交易所一线监管职能,关注重点企业脱虚向实问题提供了新思路.     

银行账户服务收费问题探析

银行账户作为社会经济活动主体参与经济活动涉及资金流动的起点和终点,是存款人办理存款、贷款和资金收付活动的基础和门户.本文从客户管理价值角度对银行利用价格杠杆达到对客户群体的甄选、以小额账户管理费为例对比中外资银行的账户收费和银行账户收费构成等几个方面对现有银行账户收费情况进行了分析,进而提出准入期、存续期、退出期不同阶段银行账户收费的定价策略.     

博彩文化与企业费用粘性

文化是影响企业成本管理行为的重要因素.本文以2008-2019年A股上市公司为研究样本,实证检验了博彩文化对企业费用粘性的影响,研究发现:企业经营地的博彩氛围越浓厚,费用粘性现象越突出.在引入工具变量、控制公司固定效应及替换自变量为CEO籍贯地的博彩文化等稳健性检验中,这一结论依然成立.进一步的影响机制检验结果表明,博彩文化对费用粘性的正面影响仅在管理者过度自信水平较高和公司治理水平相对更低的样本企业中更显著.本文将博彩文化这一非正式制度纳入费用粘性动因的分析框架中,丰富了博彩文化的经济后果相关领域的研究.     

递延所得税费用的简单化理解

新<企业会计准则>要求所得税采用资产负债表债务法进行核算,在这种情况下,正确理解递延所得税资产和递延所得税负债两个科目,有利于理解递延所得税费用及所得税会计的核算.     

股权制衡与公司经营业绩

本文使用A股公司1992~2001年的数据,从经营业绩方面比较了股权制衡公司与“一股独大”公司,发现前者显著差于后者。因此,“一股独大”并非坏事,用股权制衡来替代“一股独大”以改善“一股独大”公司的经营业绩的思路未必奏效。这很可能正是中国制度背景的表现所在。     

Voluntary disclosure of operating income

This study investigates whether New Zealand firms’ voluntary disclosure of operating income, which is also known as earnings before interest and tax, in the income statement is related to the investment opportunity set. New Zealand provides an ideal setting to examine this because New Zealand generally accepted accounting principles do not require the disclosure of operating income as an intermediate income number in arriving at net income (earnings) in the income statement. We hypothesize and find evidence that firms with high assets‐in‐place and high leverage are more likely to voluntarily disclose operating income/earnings before interest and tax. However, the assets‐in‐place finding is sensitive to alternative measures of the investment opportunity set.     

Voluntary Disclosure of Bad News

Abstract:   This paper shows that in a voluntary disclosure environment entailing both a fixed disclosure cost and a variable proprietary cost, partial disclosure equilibria may arise in which firms voluntarily disclose bad private information to the public. Furthermore, it is shown that such equilibria may arise more frequently as the threat of incuring proprietary cost increases and/or the proprietary cost itself increases.     

会计师事务所人力资本、进入权与审计质量

知识、声誉以及客户资源是会计师事务所的关键资源。审计师专用性人力资本是进入权作用下事务所关键资源的结合体,是审计质量的关键生产要素。进入权配置机制有助于实现事务所内部资源配置的均衡与稳定,促进事务所内审计师专用性人力资本投资组合达到最优。以进入权为基础的合伙人晋升与辞聘机制可激励审计师进行持续性专用性人力资本投资,进而有助于提高事务所的审计质量。进入权机制的优化实施,是有效发挥人力资本对审计质量提升作用的关键,对事务所审计质量的提高起到基础性作用。     

More Than Words: Quantifying Language to Measure Firms' Fundamentals

We examine whether a simple quantitative measure of language can be used to predict individual firms' accounting earnings and stock returns. Our three main findings are: (1) the fraction of negative words in firm-specific news stories forecasts low firm earnings; (2) firms' stock prices briefly underreact to the information embedded in negative words; and (3) the earnings and return predictability from negative words is largest for the stories that focus on fundamentals. Together these findings suggest that linguistic media content captures otherwise hard-to-quantify aspects of firms' fundamentals, which investors quickly incorporate into stock prices.     

对广告费税前扣除标准的思考

广告费税前扣除标准问题是我国企业所得税法的一个重要内容。2000年至今，在这短短不到两年的时间里，广告费税前扣除标准便做了两次调整，这两次调整的结果如何?影响怎样?广告费税前扣除标准到底多少才合适?     

Differential Market Reactions to Revenue and Expense Surprises

This study investigates investors' reactions to revenue and expense surprises around preliminary earnings announcements. Results show that investors value more highly a dollar of revenue surprise than a dollar of expense surprise. Results further show that these differential market reactions to revenue and expense surprises vary systematically for growth versus value firms and depend on (a) the proportion of variable to total costs, (b) the relative persistence of sales and expenses, and (c) the proportion of operating to total expenses. Results highlight the importance of interpreting the earnings surprise in the context of its sources—e.g. surprise in revenues or in total expenses.     

Voluntary Termination of Life Insurance Policies

Abstract

In this paper, one error-correction model (ECM) that is able to avoid the problem of producing noise within traditional multiple cointegration vectors has been employed to explore the dynamics of surrender behavior. The evidence shows that both the emergency fund hypothesis and interest rate hypothesis are sustained in the short run as well as in the long run. A unique cointegration relationship within the surrender dynamics has been validated. In addition, a new hypothesis test that stresses the competition for the withdrawal of life insurance policy cash values has also been conducted. Such a crowding-out effect between policy loans and policy surrenders might be attributed to the motivation that keeps a life policy in force, the existence of surrender charges, and the automatic premium loan provision.     

Intertemporal Dynamics of Corporate Voluntary Disclosures

While empirical evidence alludes to the intertemporal nature of corporate voluntary disclosures, most of the existing theory analyzes firms' voluntary disclosure decisions within single‐period settings. Introducing a repeated, multiperiod, disclosure setting, we study the extent to which firms' strategic disclosure behavior in the past affects their prosperity to provide voluntary disclosures in the future. Our analysis demonstrates that by voluntarily disclosing private information firms make an implicit commitment to provide similar disclosures in the future, and therefore are less willing to voluntarily disclose information in the first place. This effect is expected to be of larger magnitude for firms (1) with a long history of absence of voluntary disclosures and an impressive past operating performance, or (2) that operate in a relatively stable and predictable business and information environment, or (3) whose managers have a long time horizon and a high degree of risk aversion.     

Investor Sophistication and Voluntary Disclosures

This paper studies voluntary disclosures in a model in which investors probabilistically become informed about whether a firm has received information. The firm's value is established via a first price, sealed bid, common value auction. The paper demonstrates that the threshold level determining whether the firm withholds or discloses information uniformly declines in the probability investors are informed. The paper also shows that, notwithstanding the risk-neutrality of investors, the expected selling price of the firm strictly decreases (increases) in the probability individual investors are informed when that probability is small (large). These results follow from winner's curse effects.     

The Information Content of Tax Expense for Firms Reporting Losses

We investigate whether management's decision regarding the recognition of the valuation allowance (VA) for deferred tax assets provides incremental information about the persistence of accounting losses. We introduce a classification scheme that assigns loss firm‐years into three categories based on whether management appears to have recognized a material change in the VA, and whether or not the firm has positive taxable income (e.g., a net operating loss). The results of our study show that our tax categories contain information about the persistence of accounting losses over the following three years beyond variables previously identified to predict loss persistence. This incremental information is consistent with management using private information about the firm's future prospects in setting the VA. Finally, we find that investors’ pricing of the VA varies with the saliency of the tax signal and the information environment of the firm.