Examining gender inequalities in land rights indicators in Asia

A broad consensus has emerged among both policymakers and researchers that strengthening women's property rights is crucial for reducing poverty and achieving equitable growth. Despite the important role of land in rural livelihoods and as a form of wealth in many Asian countries, surprisingly few nationally representative data exist on women's property rights in Asia.This paucity hinders the formulation and implementation of appropriate policies to reduce gender gaps in land rights. This article reviews the existing micro‐level, large sample data on men's and women's control of land, identifies what can and cannot be measured by these data, and uses these measures to assess the gaps in the land rights of women and men. Utilizing nationally representative individual‐ and plot‐level data from Bangladesh, Tajikistan, Vietnam, and Timor‐Leste, we calculate five indicators: incidence of landownership, distribution of landownership, distribution of plots owned, mean plot size, and distribution of land area, all by sex of owner. The results show large gender gaps in landownership across countries. However, the limited information on joint and individual ownership are among the most critical data gaps and thus are an important area for future data collection and analysis.     

Are Related‐Party Sales Value‐Adding or Value‐Destroying? Evidence from China

Prior literature provides mixed and relatively little evidence on the economic consequences of related‐party transactions. We examine a hitherto underexplored issue of whether transactions among firms within the same business group increase or reduce firm value. Using a large sample of Chinese listed firms, we find that related‐party sales increase firm value. However, this value enhancement disappears for firms with (i) large percentage of parent directors, (ii) high government ownership, or (iii) tax avoidance incentives that often couple with management's rent extraction activities. Although we find that intragroup sales improve firm value in general, we also find that corporate insiders use intragroup sales to deprive value from minority shareholders. Overall, our findings highlight the interplay between ownership structure and tax avoidance incentives in determining the economic consequences of related‐party transactions.     

Managing Discretionary Accruals and Book‐Tax Differences in Anticipation of Tax Rate Increases: Evidence from China

This paper investigates how firms manage their earnings to trade off various incentives when tax rates increase. We hypothesize and find that firms generally choose to manage their taxable income upward in a book‐tax non‐conforming manner rather than in a book‐tax conforming manner before a tax rate increment, which in turn reduces the detection risk of aggressive financial reporting. These results suggest that firms give more weight to tax incentives and tax audit or regulatory inspection risks than to boosting financial reporting income in tax management. However, when firms have higher book management incentives or lower tunneling incentives (i.e., non‐state‐owned enterprises), we find that they manage their taxable income and book income upward together (i.e., in a book‐tax conforming manner), whereas their counterparts (i.e., state‐owned enterprises) do not. Overall, our paper contributes to the literature by demonstrating the interplay of tax, tunneling and financial reporting incentives in influencing tax management strategies. The findings from our paper should also help government and regulators understand more about firms’ reactions to tax rate increases.     

Can women's self‐help groups improve access to information,decision‐making,and agricultural practices? The Indian case

Effective agricultural extension is key to improving productivity, increasing farmers’ access to information, and promoting more diverse sets of crops and improved methods of cultivation. In India, however, the coverage of agricultural extension workers and the relevance of extension advice is poor. We investigate whether a women's self‐help group (SHG) platform could be an effective way of improving access to information, women's empowerment in agriculture, agricultural practices, and production diversity. We use cross‐sectional data on close to 1,000 women from five states in India and employ nearest‐neighbor matching models to match SHG and non‐SHG women along a range of observed characteristics. We find that participation in an SHG increases women's access to information and their participation in some agricultural decisions, but has limited impact on agricultural practices or outcomes, possibly due to financial constraints, social norms, and women's domestic responsibilities. SHGs need to go beyond provision of information to changing the dynamics around women's participation in agriculture to effectively translate knowledge into practice.     

Do analyst recommendations reflect shareholder rights?

We examine whether sell-side analyst recommendations reflect shareholder rights. Our rationale is that analysts should be influenced by external governance only if market participants do not efficiently price its value. We find that stronger shareholder rights are associated with more favorable recommendations. Further analysis reveals that analysts favor firms with strong shareholder rights only when strong rights appear to be warranted, but do not penalize firms for having strong rights when not needed. These findings occupy middle ground in the debate on the pricing efficiency of shareholder rights. Moreover, we find that firm value is positively associated with the strength of shareholder rights regardless of the expected external governance structure. The latter result is consistent with a “one-size-fits-all” interpretation, and implies that firms across the board could increase share value by reducing their number of anti-takeover provisions.     

Does value chain integration dampen producer price developments? Evidence from the European Union

We draw on trade theory to empirically explore the effects of value chain integration on producer price dynamics. Using the EU as an example of an integrated area, we construct measures of backward and forward linkages with intra‐ and extra‐EU trading partners at the country‐sector level. We find that especially upstream integration and EU accession dampen inflation. The results for downstream integration indicate a price‐increasing relationship. We propose novel EU integration indicators and offer insights to both theory and applied research. We also add to the policy debate on the price effects of (dis‐)integration of EU countries.     

Innovation and Corporate Tax Planning: The Distinct Effects of Patents and R&D*

Using a large US sample, we find a significant and positive relation between patents and corporate tax planning, and the effect is incremental to the effect of R&D on tax planning. We employ a quasi‐natural experiment based on staggered industry‐level innovation shocks to identify the positive causal effect of patents on corporate tax planning. We also find that patents are not associated with tax planning for domestic firms, but their association with tax planning is concentrated in multinational firms, which have the ability to shift domestic income to low‐tax countries. Moreover, we find that the identified effect mainly exists in the post–check‐the‐box (CTB) rule period when shifting income among affiliates becomes more flexible and convenient. Finally, we use two income‐shifting models and find that patents, rather than R&D, facilitate tax planning through an income‐shifting channel. Overall, our results suggest that R&D and patents facilitate firms' tax planning in distinct ways: R&D facilitates tax planning as intended through tax credits and deductions, whereas patents are used by taxpayers to avoid taxes aggressively through income shifting.     

Engagement and subjective well‐being in alternative food networks: The case of Hungary

An alternative food network (AFN) is a comprehensive concept that aims to capture new and socially innovative networks of consumers and producers in short supply chains. The objective of this study is to understand the relationship of users to AFNs using subjective well‐being (SWB), which is a relevant concept connected to eating and alternative consumption. This paper explores the engagement and nature of SWB by qualitative data collected through in‐depth interviews of new and experienced members of different AFNs. The results suggest that membership in AFNs is able to increase SWB, while certain characteristics of these networks can also decrease it. Differences according to the level of engagement have been found for the studied AFNs. The results contribute to a better understanding of consumers in alternative consumption networks and also indicate some of the limitations of this business model.     

The impact of revealing auditor partner quality: evidence from a long panel

Review of Accounting Studies - We examine whether the revelation of individual audit partner reputation affects client firms’ external financing choice. Specifically, we investigate whether a...