Investor sentiment and management earnings forecast bias

This study investigates whether investor sentiment is associated with behavioral bias in managers’ annual earnings forecasts that are generally issued early in the year when uncertainty is relatively high. I provide evidence that management earnings forecast optimism increases with investor sentiment. Furthermore, I find that managers’ annual earnings forecasts are more pessimistic during low‐sentiment periods than during normal‐sentiment periods. Since managers lack incentives to further deflate stock prices during a low‐sentiment period, this evidence indicates that sentiment‐related management earnings forecast bias is likely to be unintentional. In addition, I find that the relationship between management earnings forecast bias and investor sentiment is stronger for firms with higher uncertainty, consistent with investor sentiment having a greater influence on management earnings forecasts when uncertainty is higher.     

Family control, board independence and earnings management: Evidence based on Hong Kong firms

In this study, we document that independent corporate boards of Hong Kong firms provide effective monitoring of earnings management, which suggests that despite differences in institutional environments, corporate board independence is important to ensure high-quality financial reporting. The findings also show that the monitoring effectiveness of corporate boards is moderated in family-controlled firms, either through ownership concentration or the presence of family members on corporate boards. The results based on firms reporting small earnings increases provide additional support for our finding that the monitoring effectiveness of independent corporate boards is moderated in family-controlled firms.     

Investor protection and price informativeness about future earnings: international evidence

This study draws on the investor protection literature to identify structural factors in a country’s information environment that are likely to explain cross-country differences in the extent to which future earnings information is capitalized in current stock returns. Using a sample of 55,900 firm-years from 32 countries, we find that greater financial disclosure, higher quality earnings, and greater information dissemination through news media are associated with stock prices that are more informative about future earnings, whereas strong enforcement of insider trading laws is associated with stock prices that are less informative about future earnings. We also find that, on average, price informativeness about future earnings is greater in countries with strong investor protection. Our results illuminate the importance of structural factors constituting a country’s information environment in explaining cross-country variation in price informativeness about future earnings.     

Investor protection,prospect theory,and earnings management: An international comparison of the banking industry

This paper raises three issues related to the earnings management (EM) of banks across 48 countries. First, does earnings management of banks exist in all 48 countries? Second, what is the incentive of banks to manage earnings? Third, why does EM vary across countries? To answer these three questions, two thresholds (viz., a threshold of zero earnings and a threshold of zero earnings change) are employed.The answer to the first question above is that banks in more than two-thirds of the 48 countries sampled are found to have managed their earnings. With respect to the second question, prospect theory is used to provide an answer. The relationship between return and risk is positive for high earnings groups, but is negative for low earnings banks. Finally, as to the last question, stronger protection of investors and greater transparency in accounting disclosure can reduce banks’ incentives to manage earnings. Also, higher real GDP per capita decreases the degree of earnings management. It is seen that stronger enforcement of laws can counter intuitively result in stronger earnings management. However, this effect appears in low-income countries only, and not in high-income countries.     

Impact of family dominance on monitoring of earnings management by audit committees: Evidence from Hong Kong

This study examines whether the establishment of audit committees by Hong Kong firms would constrain earnings management, especially in firms with family-dominated corporate boards, a condition unique to Hong Kong. The study uses the methodology of three-stage (3SLS) regression analyses to control for endogeneity among earnings management, voluntarily established audit committee, and corporate board size. The results of regression analyses based on 523 observations for the period of 1999-2000 when the audit committees were first established by Hong Kong firms show that overall audit committees play a significant role in constraining earnings management even in the business environment of higher ownership concentration. The effectiveness of audit committees is, however, significantly reduced when family members are present on corporate boards, especially when family members dominate the corporate board.     

上证所与港交所上市公司投资者关系管理的比较研究

对上海证券交易所和香港证券交易所上市的蓝筹公司的网站中与投资者关系有关的条目进行了调查统计分析,提出了用WBIRX指数来衡量上市公司基于网站的投资者关系工作的发展水平。通过对WBIRX指数和调查数据进行分析发现,尽管上交所蓝筹公司在网站投资者关系建设方面取得了长足的进步,但是在总体水平上还与港交所蓝筹公司有一定差距,同网站投资者关系有关的栏目数量、类别和质量都还有待提高。     

香港市场基石投资者制度的实践与借鉴

基石投资者是香港IP O市场引导合理定价、提高发行效率的一项重要制度安排。本文对2013―2019年港股I P O进行实证分析,发现引入基石投资者可以提高IPO定价效率,帮助体量较大或估值较难的企业顺利上市,在低迷行情中起到市场稳定器的作用,但同时也存在个股流动性不足、利益输送等风险隐患。考虑到国内外形势复杂严峻,市场不确定性增强,注册制改革加速推进,新股稀缺性优势减弱,有必要借鉴香港基石投资者制度经验,进一步优化A股现行战略配售制度,合理稳定市场预期。同时,建议加强对参与战略配售投资者的信息获得、持股限售期以及信息披露等方面的监管力度。     

Examination of real and accrual earnings management: A cross-country analysis of legal origin under IFRS

This study examines the impact of legal origin differences on accrual and real earnings management behaviors for 14 international financial reporting standards (IFRS) countries. Specifically, a cross-country analysis determines the effects of enforcement intensity and IFRS adoption on earnings management (EM) types, depending on code or common law origins. The results indicate that legal origin directly affects EM behaviors, whereas enforcement intensity and IFRS result in different accrual earnings management (AEM) and real earnings management (REM) behaviors depending on the different legal origins. In particular, the findings also suggest that an increase in enforcement strength may not produce similar EM results for each legal tradition, specifically for the expected shift from AEM to REM as recent studies have proposed. This study also offers evidence that IFRS represent a constraint on AEM in code law origin countries, and it highlights a constraint on REM only for common law countries when the enforcement intensity increases.     

Takeover protection and managerial myopia: Evidence from real earnings management

We examine whether takeover protection exacerbates or mitigates real earnings management (i.e., using abnormal real activities to meet near-term earnings targets). Consistent with Stein’s (1988) prediction that takeover pressure induces managerial myopia, we find that less-protected firms are associated with higher levels of real earnings management. We further disentangle the value-destroying and signaling effects of real earnings management by finding that although abnormal real activities in general are associated with lower future performance, abnormal real activities intended to just meet earnings targets are associated with higher future performance, consistent with real earnings management conveying a signal of superior future performance in addition to a general value-destroying effect. Taken together, our evidence suggests that takeover protection reduces managers’ pressure to resort to real earnings management as a costly means of signaling better future performance.     

Short sales constraints and price adjustments to earnings announcements: Evidence from the Hong Kong market

This study examines how short sales constraints affect the stock price adjustment to the release of public information in the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Using a unique feature of this market that allows us to directly investigate the impact of short sales restriction, we find the following. First, non-shortable stocks react more strongly to the publication of negative information than shortable stocks do. Second, non-shortable stocks are overpriced before negative earnings announcements. Hence, part of the strong market reaction of non-shortable stocks on announcement day could be due to the correction of such overpricing. Third, the prices of non-shortable stocks reverse following the announcement of negative information, suggesting that investors overreact to negative information on announcement day. Fourth, it takes longer for the prices of non-shortable stocks to adjust to negative earnings information. On the whole, our results support the research that finds short sales restrictions reduce the efficiency of stock markets.     

Boards,takeover protection,and real earnings management

We investigate the effect of board governance and takeover protection on real earnings management. Four types of real earnings management are considered: sales manipulation, overproduction, the abnormal reduction of research and development (R&D) expenses, and the abnormal reduction of other discretionary expenditures. Using panel data from US public firms in the post-Sarbanes–Oxley Act period, we find that the level of real earnings management (sales manipulation, abnormal declines in R&D expenses, and other discretionary expenses) increases with better board governance and decreases with higher takeover protection. These two governance factors generally have no significant effect on overproduction. We further find that firms substitute accrual-based earnings management with sales manipulation and abnormal cuts in discretionary expenses, and the substitution effect is more pronounced in firms with stronger board governance. Overall, our findings indicate that the level of real earnings management is higher when a firm is faced with tough board monitoring, and that takeover protection may reduce managerial incentives for real earnings management.     

A comparative study of bank efficiency in three Chinese regions: Mainland China,Hong Kong,and Macao

We conduct a bank efficiency comparison among three Chinese regions: Mainland China (CN), Hong Kong (HK), and Macao (MO). Specifically, we investigate the reasons for efficiency differences observed in the three regions from within-region and cross-region perspectives. We show that HK and MO maintain stable bank performance over time that lies within the developed-economy range of efficiency levels. CN used to be well below this range but has been catching up so quickly that efficiency convergence in the three regions seems to be underway. We find that the determinants of bank efficiencies in the three Chinese jurisdictions are similar in some aspects but different in others. Most significant are their similarities in the effects of interest rate differentials, forex reserve accumulations, bank capital positions, interbank financing opportunities, and liquidity mismatch problems. Also important are their differences in the effects of bank size, revenue diversification, government ownership, property, and stock market development.     

香港保险法律制度的研究与思考

在香港保险业的发展历程中,良好的法律环境起到了相当重要的重要。本文通过分析香港保险法律制度的沿革及特征分析,比较两地保险业监管的差异性,思考借鉴香港保险法律制度的一些经验做法,为我国保险业的发展营造良好的法律环境。     

Corporate governance and earnings management in the Chinese listed companies: A tunneling perspective

This paper examines the relation between earnings management and corporate governance in China by introducing a tunneling perspective. We document systematic differences in earnings management across the universe of China's listed companies during 1999–2005, and empirically demonstrate that firms with higher corporate governance levels have lower levels of earnings management. We study two China-specific situations, in which the listed firms have strong incentives to manage earnings in order to meet certain return on equity (ROE) thresholds, and earnings management has been shown to be the most conspicuous. We identify tunneling evidence for each. Our empirical findings, although not being able to completely exclude other explanations, strongly suggest that agency conflicts between controlling shareholders and minority investors account for a significant portion of earnings management in China's listed firms.     

反思香港创业板

内地中小企业赴香港创业板上市利弊分析: 内地企业到香港创业板上市有哪些优势     

Investor protection and capital structure: International evidence

Institutions, environments, and firm characteristics are important determinants of capital structure. From a sample of firms across 45 countries, we find that investor protection plays an important role in the determinants of capital structure: firms in countries with better creditor protection have higher leverage, while firms in countries where shareholder rights are better protected use more equity funds. The other differences in institutions and environments also explain the cross-sectional variation in the aggregate capital structure across counties. Furthermore, firm characteristics identified by previous studies, as correlated in a cross-section with capital structure in developed markets, are similarly correlated in the present sample of countries. The evidence presented herein indicates that institutional differences are as important as firm characteristics in determining capital structure.     

Regulations,earnings management,and post-IPO performance: The Chinese evidence

In this study, we examine whether government regulatory initiatives in China involving IPO by SOEs may have contributed to opportunistic behaviors by the issuer. We focus on two sets of IPO regulations issued between January 1, 1996 and February 11, 1999: pricing regulations, which stipulate that IPO prices be a function of accounting performance, and penalty regulations, which penalize IPO firms for overly optimistic forecasts. We find that IPO firms that report better pricing-period accounting performance have larger declines in post-IPO profitability, lower first-day stock returns and worse long-run post-IPO stock performance. Furthermore, IPO firms that make overoptimistic forecasts also have lower first-day returns and worse post-IPO stock performance. Using non-core earnings as the proxy for earnings management, we document some evidence that IPO firms that report higher pricing-period accounting performance have engaged in more income-increasing earnings management. Hence, pricing regulations may have induced IPO firms to inflate pricing-period earnings and affect the post-IPO performance negatively. On the other hand, penalty regulations have deterred IPO firms from making overoptimistic earnings forecast and therefore have a positive impact on the behavior of IPO firms.     

Chinese corporate distress prediction using LASSO: The role of earnings management

Motivated by recently increasing accounting manipulation cases and deteriorating economic condition in China, we investigate the importance of a set of earnings management predictors and develop up-to-date distress prediction model with earnings management consideration for the Chinese market. Employing annual firm-level data from January 2014 to December 2018, we find that real earnings management (REM) is robustly selected out as a key distress predictor via the variable selection technique LASSO. Our results consistently show that REM could improve early warning of distressed companies with a slight sacrifice of accuracy in predicting healthy companies. After considering the cost of misclassification, it is confirmed that REM contains incremental information about a forthcoming corporate distress risk. Meanwhile, our results also detect an interesting finding that in China, aggressive real earnings management signals the lower probability of corporate distress, indicating distressed firms have lower capacity to conduct REM.     

Analyst coverage,earnings management and financial development: An international study

Using data from 21 countries, this paper analyzes the relation among analyst coverage, earnings management and financial development in an international context. We document that the effectiveness of financial analysts as monitors increases with a country’s financial development (FD). We find that in high-FD countries, increased within-firm analyst coverage results in less earnings management. Such is not the case in low-FD countries. Our results are economically significant and robust to reverse causality checks. Our findings illustrate one mechanism through which financial development mitigates the cost of monitoring firms and curbs earnings management.     

Determinants and consequences of voluntary switches to Chinese auditors in Hong Kong

Hong Kong market regulators have permitted 12 large Chinese accounting firms to audit the financial statements of Chinese firms that cross list in Hong Kong (i.e., H-share firms) since 2010. This paper examines the characteristics of H-share firms that voluntarily replaced their Hong Kong (HK) auditors with Chinese auditors, and the market reaction to auditor switches following this policy. We find that 38 out of 147 H-share firms voluntarily switched to Chinese auditors during 2011–2013. Switching firms are larger in size and are less likely to use Big4; they also have less need for external financing, a longer cross listing history, and a lower percentage of foreign revenue. We also find that investors negatively react to the auditor switches from HK non-Big4 to China non-Big4, but do not react to the auditor switches from HK Big4 to China Big4. This suggests that investors perceived lower audit quality for China non-Big4.