Determinants of discretionary fair value measurements: the case of Level 3 assets in the banking sector

The objective of our research was to respond to the call of Barth and Taylor ( 2010 ) for more research to examine the role of discretion in fair value estimates. Specifically, we investigate factors that explain banks’ accounting choices to use Level 3 valuation inputs from the fair value measurement hierarchy. Using hand‐collected data from a sample of international banks during 2009–2013, we find that incentives to use discretionary Level 3 valuation inputs, which can provide an opportunity to manage earnings, are associated with both firm‐level and country‐level determinants. Additional tests provide evidence that Level 3 ‘transfer‐in’ behaviour is related to changes in bank characteristics.     

Fair Value Accounting and the Financial Crisis: Messenger or Contributor?*

This commentary discusses how fair value accounting (FVA) affects the nature of financial reporting, especially for financial institutions that were deeply affected by the 2007‐9 financial crisis. Toward that end, I address four questions. First, I review FVA's role in financial reporting, emphasizing its development over time. While the commentary's focus is on the interface between financial instruments and FVA, its reach extends well beyond financial instruments. Thereafter, I discuss the measurement and valuation challenges that arise from the use of FVA in financial reporting. Then, I analyze the evidence, analytical and empirical, on the role that FVA may have played in the financial crisis of 2007‐9. Since, to some extent, the crisis is still unfolding, there is limited yet very insightful empirical evidence on this issue. The evidence does suggest that FVA, in combination with its use by regulators, may have severely undermined the financial condition of some institutions. The effect was amplified for institutions holding assets in markets that saw their liquidity dry up during the crisis. In other words, FVA may have amplified the crisis. Finally, I discuss some implications that we can draw from the crisis about the merits and risks underlying FVA. For instance, I conclude that, in a search for relevance, the use of FVA in financial reporting may accelerate its disconnection from a firm's business reality.     

Earnings attributes and investor-protection: International evidence

This study explores the effects of investor-protection on reported earnings quality assessed on the basis of four accounting-based earnings attributes (accruals quality, earnings persistence, earnings predictability, and earnings smoothness). We test the hypothesis that favorable values of each earnings attribute (considered individually) occur in countries whose institutional characteristics provide relatively strong investor-protection. The results based on K-means cluster analysis of institutional characteristics are mixed. Earnings smoothness is less prevalent in strong investor-protection countries, as hypothesized. However both accruals quality and earnings predictability are better in countries whose institutional characteristics are relatively weak. No association is found between investor-protection and earnings persistence, except that countries with low ownership concentration appear to have high earnings persistence. The results based on regression analysis are consistent with those based on the cluster analysis. These results imply that conclusions about the impact of institutional characteristics on earnings quality depend on how earnings quality is measured.     

On the nonlinear relation between product market competition and earnings quality

The literature documents conflicting results regarding the influence of product market competition on earnings quality. We extend this stream of literature by incorporating competition’s effect on both the opportunities and the incentives to manage earnings. The combination of both effects results in a nonlinear relation between product market competition and earnings quality. At low competition levels, additional information associated with one more rival helps reveal earnings irregularity and deter earnings management to a larger extent than its effect on the incentives to manage earnings, suggesting a positive relation between competition and earnings quality. At high competition levels, the latter effect dominates the former. We thus predict a positive (negative) relation between competition and earnings quality at low (high) competition levels. Consistent with our hypothesis, we document an inverted U-shaped relation between earnings quality and product market competition.     

Use of benchmarks in predicting earnings management?

This study conducts multiple approaches to identify whether earnings benchmarks are an indicator for earnings management within the Australian market. We investigate firms reporting small positive earnings and small positive earnings changes, referred to as benchmark beaters. Accrual quality models, earnings distributions and earnings persistence measures are applied to identify whether benchmark beating firms are manipulating earnings. Our findings suggest that the small positive earnings benchmark attracts earnings managers. However, we do not identify any evidence to indicate that the positive earnings change benchmark is a signal for earnings management.     

金字塔结构与会计盈余可靠性——来自中国民营上市公司的经验证据

以2006~2008年中国民营上市公司为研究样本,研究了金字塔结构对民营上市公司会计盈余可靠性的影响。研究发现,实际控制人的现金流量权与上市公司盈余可靠性呈U型关系;在控制了现金流量权后,实际控制人的控制权越低,即两权分离程度越低,则上市公司会计盈余可靠性越高;上市公司被占用的资金越大,上市公司的盈余可靠性越低。     

Do Short Sellers Target Firms with Poor Earnings Quality? Evidence from Earnings Restatements

We study the behavior of short sellers around earnings restatements. We find that short sellers accumulate positions in restating firms several months in advance of the restatement and subsequently unwind these positions after the drop in share price induced by the restatement. The increase in short interest is larger for firms with high levels of accruals prior to restatement. We document that heavily shorted firms experience poor subsequent performance and a higher rate of delisting. Overall, these results suggest that the motive for short selling is, at least in part, related to suspect financial reporting and that short sellers pay attention to information being conveyed by accruals.

浅析澳大利亚公允价值及应用(英文)

本文阐述了公允价值在为经济决策提供有用信息中所扮演的角色,以及公允价值的五个缺陷,并分析了澳大利亚两家不同行业的企业对公允价值的应用。     

Earnings quality at initial public offerings

We show that, contrary to popular belief, initial public offering (IPO) firms report more conservatively. We attribute this to the higher quality reporting demanded of public firms by financial statement users and consequentially higher monitoring by auditors, boards, analysts, rating agencies, press, and litigants, and to greater regulatory scrutiny [Ball, R., Shivakumar, L., 2005. Earnings quality in UK private firms: comparative loss recognition timeliness. Journal of Accounting and Economics 39, 83–128]. We also question the evidence of Teoh et al. [1998b. Earnings management and the subsequent market performance of initial public offerings. Journal of Finance 53, 1935–1974] supporting the alternative hypothesis that managers opportunistically inflate earnings to influence IPO pricing. We conjecture that upward-biased estimates of “discretionary” accruals occur in a broad genre of studies on earnings management around similar large transactions and events.     

Corporate citizenship and earnings attributes

This study examines the association between corporate citizenship and earnings attributes. We examine four accounting-based earnings attributes, including persistence, predictability, smoothness, and accrual quality. Our sample consists of 652 public companies used to select the 100 Best Corporate Citizens (BCC) published by Business Ethics Magazine in 2001 and 2002. We find that BCC's earnings are more predictable, more persistent, and smoother than non-BCC's. Consistent with prior research findings, our results also indicate that BCC report higher subsequent accounting returns than non-BCC in the three-year period following the publication of the 2001 and 2002 BCC lists. We attribute these findings to the effort of good corporate citizens to preserve their reputation and the public's trust.     

关于股票期权会计若干问题的探讨

随着我国企业改革的深化与市场经济的确立与完善,在企业中探索一种科学有效的激励机制已成为一个亟等解决的课题,股标期权制度作为近年来在西方国家中行之有效的一种企业激励机制,在我国也吸引了越来越多的注意力。本文在对股标期权概念及其激励作用进行分析的基础上,对股票期权的确认时机、股票期权的计量和设计股标期权应注意的问题进行了探讨。     

公允价值的困境解析及其对策

公允价值的运用在国外已成为一种趋势,在我国却并不顺利.文章认为公允价值在理论上是可行的,尽管实际运用中,由于使用者的逐利动机、会计准则制度不完善、相关的法律法规不健全及执法不严等,导致在关联交易、非货币交易、债务重组和资产减值中出现了很多问题,但是通过引入全面收益并且建立良好的实施环境,它也就具有了实务上的可行性.     

Earnings management and earnings quality

Viewing the detection of earnings management from the perspective of a crime scene investigator sheds new light on prior research on earnings management and its close relative, earnings quality. The works of Ball and Shivakumar [2008. Earnings quality at initial public offerings. Journal of Accounting and Economics, in press.] and Teoh et al. [1998. Earnings management and the subsequent market performance of initial public offerings. Journal of Finance 53, 1935–1974.] are used to illustrate the application of seven components of a crime scene investigation to earnings management research.     

The valuation consequences of voluntary accounting changes

Firm management typically claims that voluntary accounting method changes (VACs) are made to enhance the informativeness of earnings by better matching accounting practices with economic reality. In contrast, skeptics argue that managers adopt new accounting procedures to opportunistically manage earnings and influence their firm’s stock price. In this paper, we investigate these alternative motives for VACs. Specifically, we investigate whether VACs cause equity prices to deviate from their fundamental values in the short-term by studying the long-run stock-price performance for a sample of firms that voluntarily change accounting methods. In addition, we investigate changes in earnings informativeness by examining the behavior of earning response coefficients and the relationship between earnings and future cash flows in years surrounding the VAC event. In contrast to prior research, we find little evidence that a strategy based solely on the earnings effect of a VAC can generate abnormal returns. While we find weak evidence of post-VAC abnormal returns for extreme VACs, this result appears to be driven by the accruals anomaly documented in Sloan [Sloan, R. G. (1996). The Accounting Review, 71, 289–315]. Our evidence further suggests that earnings informativeness is not significantly altered by voluntary changes in accounting methods. Taken together, our evidence suggests the market recognizes the financial statement effects of alternative acceptable accounting methods and efficiently processes the valuation implications of VACs.

Earnings quality and firm valuation: international evidence*

This study uses a sample of over 7000 firms in 38 countries to investigate the relation between firm valuation and earnings quality. We find a positive and significant relation between firm valuation and an aggregate earnings quality measure based on seven earnings attributes (accruals quality, persistence, predictability, smoothness, value relevance, timeliness, and conservatism). This relation is particularly strong for firms with greater investment opportunities and more need for external finance, and for firms in low investor protection countries. Thus, firms are able to compensate for a weak legal environment by adopting higher earnings quality standards, particularly when they need to gain access to global capital markets. Overall, our findings suggest that firms with higher earnings quality are valued more highly in stock markets, supporting the idea that investors require a premium for the information risk associated with lower‐quality earnings.