Credit Ratings and CEO Risk‐Taking Incentives

This study examines the sophistication of rating agencies in incorporating managerial risk‐taking incentives into their credit risk evaluation. We measure risk‐taking incentives using two proxies: the sensitivity of managerial wealth to stock return volatility (vega) and the sensitivity of managerial wealth to stock price (delta). We find that rating agencies impound managerial risk‐taking incentives in their credit risk assessments. Assuming other things equal, a one standard deviation increase in vega (delta) will lead to an approximately one‐notch (two‐notch) rating downgrade. In addition, we evaluate the significance of credit ratings in the design of CEO compensation. Our findings suggest that rating‐troubled firms will gear down managerial incentives of risk seeking. In particular, other things equal, a rating downgrade to the lower edge of the investment category (i.e., BBB?) in the immediate prior year will bring about an approximately 51 percent reduction of vega incentive from options newly granted to the CEO in the current year. However, we find no evidence that firms' rating concerns significantly affect delta. Given the significance of credit ratings in the marketplace and their close connection to accounting, the findings of the current study advance our understanding, not only of how sophisticated rating agencies are in incorporating forward‐looking information (i.e., vega and delta) into risk assessments, but of how influential the raters are in changing firms' compensation policies. The findings also have implications on the role of accounting in constraining excessive managerial risk taking with improved disclosures on managerial compensation.     

Abstracts/Résumés

This paper examines whether credit analysts utilize the information contained in the difference between book and taxable income in analyzing a firm’s credit risk. Increased book–tax differences may be informative for credit rating agencies as they may signal decreased earnings quality or changes in the firm’s off–balance sheet financing. Results suggest a significant negative association between positive changes in book–tax differences and ratings changes. This evidence is consistent with large positive changes in book–tax differences signaling decreased earnings quality and/or increased off–balance sheet financing. We also find that large negative changes in book–tax differences result in less favorable rating changes, consistent with these changes signaling decreased earnings quality. In additional analyses, we find that the association between changes in book–tax differences and rating changes is attenuated for high–tax‐planning firms (e.g., where book–tax differences more likely reflect tax planning than decreased earnings quality).     

Deciphering Tax Avoidance: Evidence from Credit Rating Disagreements

This study investigates the role of tax avoidance in the credit‐rating process and whether differences exist in how rating agencies account for the risk relevance of tax avoidance. Using a sample of initial credit ratings assigned to public debt issuances during 1994–2013, our evidence is consistent with Moody's Investors Service and Standard & Poor's assessing the costs and benefits associated with tax avoidance differently from one another, resulting in more frequent and pronounced rating agency disagreement. Rating agency disagreement over tax avoidance is most evident when it is accompanied by relatively high levels of uncertain tax positions, foreign activities, research and development activities, or tax footnote opacity. We also find evidence that decreases (increases) in tax avoidance or tax footnote disclosure opacity are positively (negatively) associated with the convergence of split ratings. This suggests that firms can exacerbate or mitigate rating agency disagreement subsequent to bond issuance. Our study complements prior research by examining why sophisticated information intermediaries disagree about the risk relevance of tax avoidance. It also sheds light on how firms can influence rating agencies’ understanding of tax avoidance.     

Can Shareholders Be at Rest after Adopting Clawback Provisions? Evidence from Stock Price Crash Risk

Using a propensity score matched sample and a difference‐in‐differences research design, we find that stock price crash risk increases after a firm voluntarily incorporates clawback provisions in executive officers' compensation contracts. This heightened crash risk is concentrated in adopters that increase upward real activities‐based earnings management and those that reduce the readability of 10‐K reports. Based on cross‐sectional analyses, we also find that the increased crash risk is more pronounced for adopters with high ex ante fraud risk, low‐ability managers, high CEO equity incentives, and low dedicated institutional ownership. Collectively, our results suggest that the clawback adoption per se does not curb managerial opportunism but rather induces managers to use alternative channels for concealing bad news, which may contribute to a greater stock price crash risk; and the increase in crash risk is more likely in cases where incentives are strong or monitoring is weak. Our results should be of interest to regulators and policymakers considering the effects of clawback adoption on the investing public.     

基于二元Logistic模型的国内上市企业信用评级展望的影响因素研究

企业信用评级的迅速发展引起人们越来越关注企业信用评级展望的影响因素。本文通过选取84家样本企业和12个指标,使用二元Logistic模型对国内上市企业信用评级展望的影响因素进行实证研究。结果发现股价的β值和应收账款周转率是国内上市企业信用评级展望的影响因素,其中β值是主要因素。上述结果启示我们,国内上市企业可以通过降低营运风险和应收账款周转率来提高企业信用评级。     

Information contents of collateral under heterogeneous borrower qualities on the bank loans market in China

We analyze the risk of default and provision of collateral for bank loans made to firms of varied credit qualities using a unique dataset obtained from a major state-owned commercial bank in China. Both high and low quality borrowers provide collateral more often than medium quality debtors do. Using models that explicitly incorporate heterogeneous borrower qualities, we find a positive relation between collateralization and risk of default for loans issued to debtors with low credit ratings. In contrast, collateral provided by debtors with high credit ratings is negatively associated with the risk of default. These results suggest that low quality borrowers may be required to provide collateral at the bank's request to mitigate moral hazard problem. On the other hand, high quality borrowers may provide collateral willingly to signal quality in order to mitigate adverse selection problem when competing for getting access to bank loans. Our findings shed new lights on different information contents of collateral on the bank loans market of China, and have important implications for banks in screening, contracting and monitoring the risk of commercial loans for clients with diverse credit qualities.     

Multiple Information Signals in the Market for Charitable Donations

We find evidence indicating that donors use third‐party rating information when they donate to U.S. nonprofit organizations (nonprofits). Specifically, using a sample of over 3,800 unique nonprofits rated by the three largest charity rating organizations in 2007, and over 12,000 unrated control nonprofits, we find that rated nonprofits have significantly higher direct donations than unrated charities. We also hypothesize and find that nonprofits with ratings from multiple rating organizations receive incrementally higher levels of donations. In addition, although charities that receive a positive rating have higher levels of donor support than those receiving a negative rating, both positively and negatively rated nonprofits receive a higher level of direct donations than unrated nonprofits. Finally, we find that nonprofits with consistently good ratings receive higher donations than those with mixed or consistently negative ratings, indicating the donor community values consistency across the three rating agencies.     

结构性违约、信用分层与评级机构的策略性反应——来自中国信用债市场的证据

2014年以来,以主要集中于民企的"结构性违约"宣告了中国信用债市场刚性兑付的"结构性打破",债券市场进入了新的发展阶段。利用2013-2017年债券数据,本文深入分析了结构性违约对评级机构行为和效率的影响,主要有如下发现：首先,信用评级的市场公信力会因政府隐性担保导致的"刚性兑付"而削弱;其次,结构性违约爆发之后,信用评级的整体效率有所提升,但在不同发行主体呈现分化,对于非城投类企业,信用评级对发行利差的影响显著增大,意味着评级公信力的显著提升,而对于城投类企业,评级效率并未明显改善;进一步研究表明,出现这种情况的原因在于评级机构在违约后采取了差异化的评级策略,对于违约风险较大的非城投类债券,评级机构倾向采取"收紧评级"的策略;对于违约风险较低的城投债,评级机构倾向于采取"放宽评级"的策略。这种策略性行为是导致市场"信用分层"的重要原因,并有可能推升民营企业的融资成本。     

Enterprise Risk Management Program Quality: Determinants,Value Relevance,and the Financial Crisis

This paper investigates factors associated with high‐quality Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) programs in financial services firms, and whether ERM quality enhances performance and signals credibility to the financial markets. ERM, developed with the assistance of the accounting profession, provides a framework and plan to integrate management of all sources of risk. Challenged by measurement difficulties common to research on management control systems, prior ERM studies present mixed findings. Using ERM quality ratings of financial companies by Standard & Poor's, we find that higher ERM quality is associated with greater complexity, less resource constraint, and better corporate governance. Controlling for such characteristics, we find that higher ERM quality is associated with improved accounting performance. Results show a market reaction to signals of enhanced management control from initial ERM quality ratings and rating revisions, and a stronger response to earnings surprises for firms with higher ERM quality. Focusing on the recent global financial crisis, our analysis suggests that there is no relation between ERM quality and market performance prior to and during the market collapse. However, returns of higher ERM quality companies are higher during the market rebound. Overall, results reveal that firm performance and value are enhanced by high‐quality controls that integrate risk management efforts across the firm, enabling better oversight of managers' risk‐taking behavior and aligning that behavior with the strategic direction of the company.     

Does Other Comprehensive Income Volatility Influence Credit Risk and the Cost of Debt?

We examine the usefulness of other comprehensive income (OCI) to debt investors in nonfinancial companies. Motivated by Merton's (1974) real options framework, we construct a measure of incremental OCI volatility, designed to capture the effect of OCI on overall firm asset volatility, which is a primary driver of credit risk in Merton's (1974) model. We find that the volatility of incremental OCI influences the likelihood of default, credit ratings, and the cost of debt. Overall, our evidence suggests that creditors use information from OCI in their assessment of firm credit risk and in pricing debt contracts.     

银行分项监管对银行风险的影响——基于发展中国家数据的实证分析

基于43 个发展中国家357 家银行数据,运用系统GMM 方法,研究银行分项监管对银行风险的影响。其中,银行监管包括12 类分项监管,银行风险包括总体风险、信用评级风险和破产风险。回归结果显示：资本监管、内部管理监管、存款保险监管、信息披露监管和监管效率5 类分项监管均能降低3 类银行风险。其他分项监管能降低1 到2 类银行风险,即准入监管能够降低总体风险,增加信用评级风险;所有权监管会增加信用评级风险,降低破产风险;外部审计监管增加银行总体风险和破产风险,降低信用评级风险;流动性监管降低银行破产风险,对总体风险、信用评级风险不显著;资产分类和处置监管降低总体风险、信用评级风险,但增加破产风险;退出监管增加银行总体风险、信用评级风险,降低银行破产风险。本文的研究对我国加强银行监管,降低银行风险有很强的现实参考意义。     

Rating the UK: the British government's sovereign credit ratings, 1976–8

The UK received its first sovereign credit ratings in 1978. Despite having required financial assistance from the International Monetary Fund only 18 months earlier, the British government managed to secure ‘triple‐A’ ratings from both Standard and Poor's and Moody's. Both assessments of creditworthiness reflected improving economic conditions but also British efforts to influence the sovereign ratings process. The Bank of England and the Treasury sought guidance from American investment banks to prepare for the ratings process and then controlled the flow of information available to the rating agencies accordingly, stressing the strengths of the national economy and downplaying the weaknesses. The British government subsequently launched its first bond issue in the New York market to high levels of investor demand. Consideration of these achievements complements the historiography concerning Britain's economic fortunes in the late 1970s. Scrutiny of events also offers a rare glimpse into the confidential sovereign ratings process. Both agencies relied on a combination of quantitative and qualitative evaluations of the UK. In addition, this article highlights the existence of a unique period in the history of sovereign credit ratings. From 1974 to 1985, the ratings industry enjoyed a cautious revival focused principally on ‘triple‐A’ borrowers.     

Discretionary Accounting Accruals,Managers' Incentives,and Audit Fees*

This paper examines the linkages between discretionary accruals (DAs), managerial share ownership, management compensation, and audit fees. It draws on the theory that managers of firms with high management ownership are likely to use DAs to communicate value‐relevant information, while managers of firms with high accounting‐based compensation are likely to use DAs opportunistically to manage earnings to improve their compensation. OLS regression results of 648 Australian firms show that (1) there is a positive association between DAs and audit fees; (2) managerial ownership negatively affects the positive relationship between DAs and audit fees; and (3) this negative impact is further found to be weaker for firms with high accounting‐based management compensation.     

Horizon‐Induced Optimism as a Gateway to Earnings Management

Recent work in accounting suggests that managerial optimism can lead managers to escalate income‐increasing earnings management. In this paper, I examine how a fundamental attribute of the earnings management setting—the amount of time between the earnings management decision and the future reversal—serves as one potential source of managerial optimism. I conduct two experiments to test whether the amount of time between the earnings management decision and the future reversal systematically induces optimism that increases participants’ propensity to engage in behavior that is analogous to accruals‐based earnings management and to real earnings management, holding constant incentives, agency frictions, and the information environment. My results indicate that, independent of their innate optimism, the time between the earnings management decision and the future reversal likely encourages managers to overestimate their ability to compensate for current‐period earnings management through strong future performance. This optimism, in turn, likely increases managers’ propensity to engage in both forms of earnings management.     

Assessing Local Government Debt Risks in China: A Case Study of Local Government Financial Vehicles

Strong credit expansion in China after the recent global financial crisis has brought local government financial vehicles (LGFV) into the spotlight. Rapid growth of LGFV has triggered concern about local government indebtedness, banks' asset quality and, more broadly, China's medium‐term financial stability and sovereign risk. This paper constructs a unique firm‐level dataset to evaluate the country's local government debt. We find an uneven distribution of LGFV, which are concentrated in the coastal areas, and a deterioration of their debt repaying ability from 2010 to 2012. We use principal component analysis (PCA) along with multivariate discriminate analysis (MDA) to identify the credit risk of LGFV based on conventional financial variables as well as local governments' fiscal status. We also estimate the safe boundaries of debt bearing at the provincial government level. The estimations reveal more severe local government debt risks in the middle‐western provinces and higher risks associated with LGFV at the municipal and county levels. Although it is very unlikely that there will be a national debt crisis in China, the high risk of LGFV should be noted and effectively controlled by improving the fiscal transparency of local governments and reforming the fiscal system.     

Are Fundamentals Priced in the Bond Market?*

To date, the discussion of the Lev and Thiagarajan 1993 fundamentals in the prior literature has been exclusively in the context of the stock market. Our study is the first to examine the value‐relevance of these fundamentals for default risk. By focusing on the market for new bond issues, we examine the value‐relevance of the fundamental score using expected rather than realized returns. Also, by focusing on the bond market we provide a different perspective than that brought by prior studies relying solely on stock prices. We find the fundamentals to be priced in the market for new bond issues as indicators of expected future earnings and to be value‐relevant in enabling the market to discern differences in bond credit quality over and above the published bond ratings.     

Evidence of Manager Intervention to Avoid Working Capital Deficits

We study managers’ interventions in financial reporting by examining working capital deficits, measured as current ratios less than 1.0. Current ratios represent important balance sheet liquidity indicators to lenders and creditors, and have an identifiable and naturally occurring reference point at 1.0, analogous to the profit/loss income statement reference point. We find that distributions of reported current ratios of both U.S. and non‐U.S. firms exhibit a discontinuity at 1.0. For U.S. firms, we find that the discontinuity increases with exogenous increases in the cost of credit in the economy, and that determinants of the likelihood to achieve a given current ratio are diagnostic precisely at the 1.0 discontinuity location but not at other nearby locations in the current ratio distribution. U.S. firms that avoid working capital deficits report lower proportions of inventory and higher proportions of accounts receivable in current assets and, when credit is tight, higher proportions of cash, consistent with managers increasing sales volume so as to capitalize profit margins and thereby increase current assets. For non‐U.S. firms, the discontinuity is more pronounced for observations from common law countries, a proxy for jurisdictions where financial reports are more intended to provide decision‐useful information. The evidence suggests that managers intervene to achieve a balance sheet reporting objective that stems from stakeholder use of reference points.     

Corporate Tax Aggressiveness and Insider Trading

We examine the association between corporate tax aggressiveness and the profitability of insider trading under the assumption that insider trading profits reflect managerial opportunism. We document that insider purchase profitability, but not sales profitability, is significantly higher on average in more tax aggressive firms. We also find that the positive association between tax aggressiveness and insider purchase profitability is attenuated for firms with more effective monitoring and is accentuated for firms with a more opaque information environment. In addition, we provide empirical evidence that tax aggressiveness is significantly associated with greater insider sales volume in the fiscal year prior to a stock price crash. Finally, we find that the association between tax aggressiveness and insider purchase profitability weakens after the introduction of FIN 48, consistent with the increased transparency of tax positions under the new disclosure requirement reducing insiders' information advantage and hence their ability to profit from insider trading. To the extent that insider trading profits reflect managerial opportunism, our results are consistent with managers exploiting the opacity arising from tax aggressive activities to extract rent from shareholders, particularly those shareholders who sold their shares to the managers. Our findings are particularly important in light of the number of studies relying on the agency view of tax avoidance to develop arguments or to draw inferences.     

Were Information Intermediaries Sensitive to the Financial Statement‐Based Leading Indicators of Bank Distress Prior to the Financial Crisis?

In this paper, we address two questions that emerged in the aftermath of the 2008 financial/banking crisis. First, did the financial statements of bank holding companies provide an early warning of their impending distress? Second, were the actions of four key financial intermediaries (short sellers, equity analysts, Standard and Poor's credit ratings, and auditors) sensitive to the information in the banks’ financial statements about their increased risk and potential distress? We find a significant cross‐sectional association between banks’ 2006 Q4 financial information and bank failures over 2008–2010, suggesting that the financial statements reflected at least some of the increased risk of bank distress in advance. The mean abnormal short interest in our sample of banks increased from 0.66 percent in March 2005 to 2.4 percent in March 2007 and the association between short interest and leading financial statement indicators also increased. In contrast, we observe neither a meaningful change in analysts’ recommendations, Standard and Poor's credit ratings, and audit fees nor an increased sensitivity of these actions to financial indicators of bank distress over this time period. Our results suggest that actions of short sellers likely provided an early warning of the banks’ upcoming distress prior to the 2008 financial crisis.     

Labor Unions and Income Smoothing

We study labor unions, an important stakeholder group that has not been a focus of the earnings smoothing literature. We posit that managers strike a balance between sheltering resources from employees’ profit sharing demands and catering to employees’ aversion to downside risk by smoothing earnings. We then hypothesize that a strong labor union would intensify managerial incentives to smooth earnings. Consistent with our hypothesis, we find that union strength is positively associated with earnings smoothing activities through management of both accruals and R&D expenditures.