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.     

Effects of air pollution on accounting conservatism

We examine the impact of air pollution on a firm's accounting policy conservatism. We hypothesize that, in response to risks associated with increased air pollution, firms apply more conservative accounting practices and utilize more conservative estimates in their reporting. Using a sample of Chinese firms, accounting conservatism measures, and a satellite-based air pollution metric, we confirm the validity of our hypothesis. Additional analysis suggests that the impact of air pollution on accounting policy conservatism is more salient for firms in high-pollution industries, firms under severe financial constraint, firms with higher environmental risk, and firms that receive high media coverage. Further, we document that air pollution does not significantly affect a firm's return on assets, year-on-year sales growth, or Tobin's Q measure. Hence, it is management's risk perception, not objective performance concern, that is driving accounting conservatism. Finally, specifically investigating accounting conservatism, we discover that, for firms with higher pollution levels, selling general and administrative expenses, liabilities provision, accrued expenses, and asset impairment loss are significantly higher.     

Securities litigation risk and board gender diversity

We investigate the effect of board gender diversity on the risk of securities litigation. We find that this risk is inversely related to the fraction of female independent directors on a firm's board. Additionally, the effectiveness of these directors in reducing securities litigation risk is negatively related to the firm's monitoring costs and positively related to its complexity. We further investigate the channels through which female independent directors may reduce the risk of securities litigation and attribute the reduction to improvements in conditional accounting conservatism and corporate social responsibility policy.     

Corporate suppliers and customers and accounting conservatism

We argue that a firm's suppliers and customers prefer it to account more conservatively due to information asymmetry and these stakeholders' asymmetric payoffs with respect to the firm's performance. We predict that a firm meets this demand for accounting conservatism when suppliers or customers have bargaining advantages over it that enable them to dictate terms of trade or whether trade occurs at all. We show that when a firm's suppliers or customers have greater bargaining power, the firm recognizes losses more quickly. Our findings provide insights into how a firm's powerful suppliers and customers are associated with its accounting practices and also support the contracting explanation for accounting conservatism.     

The disclosure of corporate social responsibility reports and sales performance in China

Based on legitimacy and stakeholder theory, we investigate whether there is an association between the disclosure of corporate social responsibility reports and a firm's sales performance in China. The empirical results reveal that the return on sales and sales growth are positively associated with the level of corporate social responsibility reporting in China. This positive association is strengthened when firms have concentrated customers. Firms use corporate social responsibility reports to improve sales performance and attract customers, who are one of their major stakeholders, and retain their legitimacy.     

Employee firing costs and accounting conservatism: Evidence from wrongful discharge laws

This paper identifies the causal effect of a firm's employee firing costs on its conditional conservatism, using the staggered adoption of US state wrongful discharge laws (WDLs) that increase a firm's cost of firing employees. We find that the adoption of WDLs leads to a significant increase in conditional conservatism. This result is greater for firms that are more labor-intensive, have higher propensities to fire employees, make more firm-specific investments and have greater risk. Overall, our findings support the view that higher firing costs lead to greater demand for conditional conservatism to decrease investment inefficiencies because higher firing costs make inefficient investments (including overinvestment in negative-net present value (NPV) projects and delays in disinvesting poorly performing projects) costlier for the firm.     

The Relation between Stakeholder Management,Firm Value,and CEO Compensation: A Test of Enlightened Value Maximization

Whether firms pursue shareholder value maximization or the maximization of stakeholder welfare is a controversial issue whose outcomes seem irreconcilable. We propose that firms are likely to compensate their executives for pursuing the firm's goal be it shareholder value maximization or the maximization of stakeholder welfare. In this paper, we examine the correlation between firm value, stakeholder management, and compensation. We find that stakeholder management is positively related to firm value. However, firms do not compensate managers for having good relationships with its stakeholders. These results do not support stakeholder theory. We also find an endogenous association between compensation and firm value. Our results are consistent with Jensen's (2001) enlightened value maximization theory. Managers are compensated for achieving the firm's ultimate goal, value maximization. However, managers optimize interaction with stakeholders to accomplish this objective.     

CEO political preference and credit ratings

This study investigates whether a CEO's personal political ideology, as captured by his or her political contributions, is associated with a firm's credit ratings. Republican CEOs, we find, are associated with higher credit ratings, especially when their firms are headquartered in conservative areas. In addition, the link between political ideology and credit rating is more pronounced in firms that exhibit high financial distress or weak corporate governance. Changes in political ideology are associated with changes in credit rating. Our results support the behavior consistency, upper echelon, and social identity theories, as well as the risk acceptance hypothesis, and are robust to a number of alternative specifications as well as when alternate approaches and measures of credit risk are introduced. Using Republican CEOs as a proxy for conservative CEOs, our evidence implies that credit rating agencies justifiably view a CEO's political ideology and conservatism as indicative of corporate policies and, therefore, as an important determinant of the firm's credit ratings.     

Accounting conservatism and corporate social responsibility

We examine the association between accounting conservatism, expressed in the form of asymmetric timeliness of recognition of economic gains and losses, and corporate social responsibility (CSR). We provide evidence that, under unfavorable macroeconomic conditions and financial constraints, as well as increased levels of outside pressure from debtholders and equity holders, catering for capital providers through conservative reporting becomes a managerial priority over engagement in CSR. Our results overall indicate that, for our whole sample period (starting in the early 2000s), higher levels of conservatism are negatively associated with a CSR orientation shown by firms; however, our analysis also indicates a significant reversing trend regarding the effect of conservatism on CSR, coinciding with the post-financial-crisis period. The findings are robust to a number of specifications and tests, including the use of an instrumental variable approach explicitly addressing endogeneity biases related to reverse causality concerns. Our study suggests that, under monitoring pressure from financial stakeholders, firms prioritize commitment to accounting conservatism over the needs of non-financial stakeholders and other interest groups.     

On the Foundations of Corporate Social Responsibility

Using corporate social responsibility (CSR) ratings for 23,000 companies from 114 countries, we find that a firm's CSR rating and its country's legal origin are strongly correlated. Legal origin is a stronger explanation than “doing good by doing well” factors or firm and country characteristics (ownership concentration, political institutions, and globalization): firms from common law countries have lower CSR than companies from civil law countries, with Scandinavian civil law firms having the highest CSR ratings. Evidence from quasi‐natural experiments such as scandals and natural disasters suggests that civil law firms are more responsive to CSR shocks than common law firms.     

The role of social capital in price efficiency: International evidence

This study finds that firms with higher social capital and trust, as measured by firm environmental and social (E&S) performance, demonstrate better stock price efficiency. The result in a sample of 45 countries remains robust to alternative approaches addressing the endogeneity concerns. This relation is mainly derived from a firm's E&S engagements related to third parties and the whole of society, which regulate the firm's information environment after accounting for other influences. The positive role of E&S performance is further shaped by the firm's associated macro-level trust and social capital, as proxied by the market's cultural and institutional factors.     

CEO Compensation Risk and Timely Loss Recognition

Prior studies demonstrate that high CEO compensation risk encourages managers to engage in risk‐seeking behavior, thus intensifying agency conflicts between creditors and borrowers. We argue and document that accounting conservatism plays an important role in mitigating debt holder and shareholder conflicts over asset substitution arising from high CEO compensation risk. Our empirical results show that firms with high CEO compensation risk tend to use more timely loss recognition and this positive relationship is more pronounced for firms with high leverage. Additional results show that the positive relationship between CEO compensation risk and borrowing costs is reduced for firms using timely loss recognition, suggesting that creditors perceive timely loss recognition as a risk‐reducing mechanism. Using the passage of FAS 123R as a quasi‐natural experiment on managerial compensation risk, we find a significant reduction in the use of timely loss recognition for firms experiencing a decrease in CEO compensation risk after the passage of FAS 123R. Lastly, we show that timely loss recognition is positively associated only with the compensation risk of the firm's primary decision maker (i.e., its CEO) and not with the compensation risk of subordinates.     

机构持股与会计稳健性

以我国A股具有机构持股的上市公司2007～2011年的数据为样本,采用Basu(1997)的盈余-回报率模型研究了机构持股对会计稳健性的影响。结果表明:机构持股比例越高,会计稳健性越好。考虑到产权性质后,国有公司的机构持股比例与会计稳健性具有显著的正相关关系,而在非国有公司中并不显著。另外,高成长性公司中机构持股对会计稳健性的影响显著为正,但在低成长性公司这一结果不显著。     

Credit ratings and social capital

We posit that credit ratings are higher for firms headquartered in high social capital regions, where managers are more likely to be trustworthy. To test this hypothesis, 9460 corporate debt ratings of US firms from 2001– 2015 was examined. We find that firms headquartered in a county with high social capital in the US have a higher credit rating. This effect is incremental and economically comparable to that of corporate social responsibility. Additional tests suggest that the impact of social capital on ratings is likely because analysts find them more credible. We conclude that credit analysts may consider the social norm around the firm's headquarters when rating firms.     

Does CSR matter in times of crisis? Evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic

The debate over how firm stakeholder engagement is tied to preserving shareholder wealth has received growing attention in recent years, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis. Against this backdrop, we examine the relation between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and stock market returns during the COVID-19 pandemic-induced market crash and the post-crash recovery. Using a sample of 1750 U.S. firms and two major sources of CSR ratings, we find no evidence that CSR affected stock returns during the crash period. This result is robust to various sensitivity tests. In additional cross-sectional analysis, we find some supporting evidence, albeit weak, that the relation between CSR and stock returns during the pandemic-related crisis is more positive when CSR is congruent with a firm's institutional environment. We also find that Business Roundtable companies, which committed to protecting stakeholder interests prior to the pandemic, do not outperform during the pandemic crisis. We conclude that pre-crisis CSR is not effective at shielding shareholder wealth from the adverse effects of a crisis, suggesting a potential disconnect between firms' CSR orientation (ratings) and actual actions. Our evidence suggests that investors can distinguish between genuine CSR and firms engaging in cheap talk.     

Conservatism,SEC investigation,and fraud

We present evidence on the relationship between firms that have engaged in fraudulent financial reporting and accounting conservatism. We empirically investigate the extent to which US firms identified by the SEC in their Enforcement Releases demonstrate higher levels of conditional conservatism in order to mitigate information asymmetry and agency problems. Specifically, by assessing the timing of changes in the litigation risk environment for fraud firms, we document how differences in heightened legal liability guide changes in conservative accounting behavior. Compared to a matched non-fraud control sample, we document that fraud firms have significantly lower levels of accounting conservatism in the pre-fraud period. Consistent with changes in potential legal liability, we find an increase in accounting conservatism for fraud firms during the SEC investigation period. Subsequently, during the public discovery of fraud, any increases in accounting conservatism are marginal and appear to converge back to lower levels compared to the SEC investigation period. Overall, our findings suggest more temporary changes in conservative reporting in the short-term for fraud firms. We also document that increased levels of accounting conservatism for fraud firms are not due solely to the passage of the SOX Act. Our findings aid in explaining fraud firms’ incentives and opportunities for accounting conservatism and lend support for why standard setters, regulators and auditors should continue to monitor and re-evaluate conservatism’s short-term effects that are conditioned on changes in a firm’s risk environment.     

Do Firms Adjust Their Timely Loss Recognition in Response to Changes in the Banking Industry?

This paper investigates the impact of changes in the banking sector on firms’ timely recognition of economic losses. In particular, we focus on the entry of foreign banks into India during the 1990s, which likely causes an exogenous increase in lender demand for timely loss recognition. Analyzing variation in both the timing and the location of the new foreign banks’ entries, we find that foreign bank entry is associated with more timely loss recognition and this increase is positively related to a firm's subsequent debt levels. The change appears driven by a shift in firms’ incentives to supply additional information to lenders and lenders seem to value this information. The increase in timely loss recognition is also concentrated among firms more dependent on external financing: private firms, smaller firms, and nongroup firms. Overall, our evidence suggests that a firm's accounting choices respond to changes in the banking industry.     

Corporate performance and firm perception: The British experience

Previous academic research has presented a theoretical basis for a relationship between attributes of a firm's reputation and its financial performance. For the United States, researchers have analysed the correspondence between market and accounting based measures of US firm performance and external evaluators' perceptions of the qualitative attributes of US firms. In this study, expert surveys on the qualitative performance of British firms conducted by the British publication, the Economist, which are similar in content to surveys conducted by Fortune magazine for US firms, are used to determine the correspondence between qualitative and quantitative measures of British firms' performance. Results indicate that differences may exist between US and Britain in the use of qualitative survey data on a firm's strategic attributes as a forecast of a firm's future quantitative performance measures. Results also indicate that for small firms, certain qualitative factors (e.g. capacity to innovate) may be of greater importance in forecasting accounting and security market returns.     

Imperfect Accounting and Reporting Bias

Errors and bias are both inherent features of accounting. In theory, while errors discourage bias by lowering the value relevance of accounting, they can also facilitate bias by providing camouflage. Consistent with theory, we find a hump‐shaped relation between a firm's propensity to engage in intentional misstatement and the prevalence of unintentional misstatements in the firm's industry for the whole economy and a majority of the industries. The result is robust to using firms’ number of items in financial statements and exposure to complex accounting rules as alternative proxies for errors and to using the restatement amount in net income to quantify the magnitude of bias and errors. To directly test for the two effects of errors, we show that when errors are more prevalent, the market reacts less to firms’ earnings surprises and bias is more difficult to detect. Our results highlight the imperfectness of accounting, advance understanding of firms’ reporting incentives, and shed light on accounting standard setting.     

CEO turnover and bankrupt firms’ emergence

This paper examines whether CEO turnover within a bankrupt firm predicts the firm's likelihood to reemerge from bankruptcy proceedings as a reorganized entity. Using 836 bankruptcy cases filed under Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code from 1989 through 2016, we show that firms that undergo CEO turnover are significantly more likely to emerge from Chapter 11 proceedings. We conduct further analyses to examine the potential mechanisms through which CEO turnover is linked to a firm's chance of emergence. Consistent with the perspective that CEO turnover constitutes an observable event that can signal creditor support, we find that CEO turnover in bankrupt firms is positively associated with debtor-in-possession financing. Additionally, there is a significant increase in managerial quality post-turnover. Further, we document that the predictive power of CEO turnover is stronger in bankruptcy cases with greater uncertainty, such as in free-fall bankruptcies, where there is less preexisting agreement between the firm and its creditors. Overall, our findings provide valuable insight into external investors and stakeholder groups, whose interests are significantly impacted by corporate bankruptcies.