审计委员会财务专长对管理层策略性披露行为的治理效应——基于“管理层讨论与分析”的证据

在中国资本市场中,审计委员会对管理层策略性披露行为是否有治理效应尚未引起重视。因此,以2014—2019年沪市A股上市公司披露的“管理层讨论与分析”为研究对象,从文本信息的语调和可读性两个视角出发考察这一治理效应。研究发现,审计委员会财务专长能够对管理层策略性披露行为起到治理作用,对管理层操纵语调行为的治理作用在披露“好消息”的企业更为显著,对管理层操纵可读性行为的治理作用在“好消息”“坏消息”之间无显著差异,且上市公司所在省份的市场化进程对两者间关系起到了正向调节作用。这一研究不仅从形式质量维度拓展了管理层策略性披露的相关研究,而且为审计委员会的履职效用提供了新证据,进而有助于审计委员会制度的完善。     

CEO权力、审计行业专长与税收激进度

税收激进行为可视为一种公司代理问题,代理人特征无疑会影响税收行为表现。以我国2007—2011年A股上市公司为样本,以CEO权力作为代理人特征的切入点,探讨其对公司税收激进度的影响,以及作为外部监督机制的注册会计师审计对公司税收激进度的约束作用。研究结果表明,CEO权力越大,公司税收激进度越高;进一步地,纳入审计监督机制后,所聘事务所的审计行业专长对该关系有显著的抑制作用。上述研究结论可为税收政策制定及监督机制完善提供有益参考和经验支持。     

Expert relevance and the use of context-driven heuristic processes in risk perception

The effectiveness of a medical treatment should not predict its risk (highly effective treatments can be either safe or risky), however, people’s use of heuristic shortcuts may lead them to judge a link between effectiveness and risk, typically a negative correlation. A particular concern is that experts might use such a strategy and that this is unlikely to provide an accurate judgement. This large-scale field-based experiment compares expert-relevant and non-expert-relevant contexts, for both expert and public judgements of risk and effectiveness in the context of blood transfusion medicine. Postal questionnaires were distributed to anaesthetists (experts, N?=?123) and a general public (non-expert) comparison group (N?=?1153); half of the participants were cued with accompanying general information about genetically-modified (GM) biotechnology and half received specific information about blood product technologies. The blood-focussed information served to emphasise the medical relevance of the questionnaire to the expert group. Regression analyses showed that generally perceived effectiveness predicted perceived risk for both experts and non-experts, which suggests heuristic processing. However, although experts appeared to engage in heuristic processing for risk perceptions in certain circumstances, this processing is strongly affected by context. Experts who received the medically relevant context rated perceptions of effectiveness independently of perceptions of risk, unlike those who received the GM context. This indicates a reduced reliance on a low-effort heuristic for experts given an expertise-relevant context. The results are considered in light of dual-process (rational-associative) accounts of reasoning.     

Health and finance: exploring the parallels between health care delivery and professional financial planning

This article compares the role of risk and uncertainty discourse across two rather disparate areas of expertise: personal financial planning and health care delivery. On the basis of 42 semi-structured interviews and eight recorded meetings between planners and their clients, as well as a comprehensive review of extant health literature, it is argued that three points of convergence – the discursive management of uncertainty, the temporalization of risk, and the use of images – offer a modicum of certainty which functions ultimately to legitimize expertise and facilitate courses of remedial action while simultaneously assuaging laypeople’s existential anxieties. The article concludes with a number of reflections on the importance of agency and trust.     

Determinants of board members' financial expertise — Empirical evidence from France

Very few countries require directors to be financially literate. This article investigates the determinants of boards' financial expertise using a sample of 95 nonfinancial French listed firms. We construct a measure of financial expertise based on educational and career background data for 943 individuals occupying 1140 posts in our sample and explore the determinants of average per-firm financial expertise using a Tobit analysis. We find that average financial expertise is negatively associated with board type (two-tier versus one-tier) and growth opportunities and positively associated with board independence, ownership concentration, and institutional ownership. These findings are robust to sensitivity analyses.     

共享审计师合作关系网络与会计信息可比性

以2010—2020年A股上市公司为研究样本,分析并检验样本公司与同行其他公司共享审计师合作关系网络对会计信息可比性的影响。研究发现,选择与同行共享审计师合作关系网络的公司会计信息可比性更高。当审计师合作关系网络具有行业专长、审计师处于网络核心位置、网络内同行审计师之间距离更近时,共享审计师合作关系网络对公司会计信息可比性的提升作用更强;此外,这一效应还受到事务所规模以及事务所转制等因素的影响。检验还发现,与同行公司共享审计师合作关系网络能够促进审计效率的提升,且不会造成客户信息的泄露。上述研究结论证实了与同行公司共享审计师合作关系网络会对会计信息可比性产生积极影响,拓展了审计团队领域以及事务所治理的相关研究文献,对保障和提升审计师的执业质量具有一定的启示意义。     

分析师行业专长、分析师盈余预测与盈余公告的信息溢出效应

盈余公告是资本市场的重要信息来源。通过研究A股市场年报发布先后顺序所产生的信息溢出现象发现,分析师会根据先公告公司的盈余消息,修正对同行业后公告公司的盈余预测。这种现象在同时跟踪两家公司的分析师中更加显著。进一步的研究表明,分析师行业专长可以增进这一机制。行业经验更丰富的分析师预测调整幅度更大,预测准确度的提升也更明显。分析师的决策过程受规模经济的影响。分析师在同一行业内,跟踪的企业越多,搜集和处理的行业信息越多,对行业内溢出信息的利用越充分。研究结果为分析师提高预测准确性以及投资者改进决策质量提供了依据,也为监管者完善信息披露制度提供了参考。     

The impact of audit committee expertise on audit quality: Evidence from UK audit fees

Governance regulators currently place great emphasis on ensuring the presence of financial expertise on audit committees (Sarbanes-Oxley, 2002; UK Corporate Governance Code 2010–2016). Underlying this is a belief that greater expertise enhances the effectiveness of audit committees and, by extension, the quality of the external audit. This study investigates the impact of audit committee expertise on one measure of audit quality - audit fees paid by FTSE350 companies. Our analysis finds that audit committees possessing greater levels of financial expertise are associated with higher audit fees. When we segregate financial expertise between accounting and non-accounting, we find that the positive impact identified is driven by non-accounting expertise. Furthermore, when we separate FTSE100 and FTSE250 firms we find the impact of financial expertise is confined to FTSE250 firms. Our findings are important as they highlight the usefulness of segregating financial expertise between specialists and non-specialists, something which regulators in the UK and in the USA currently do not do. Our findings also highlight the potential value of audit committee expertise in smaller as opposed to larger listed firms, suggesting that the value of expertise to audit quality depends on the specific financial reporting challenges firms face.     

Methodological institutionalism as a transformation of structural econometrics

I agree with Nell and Errouaki that an econometrics based on neoclassical economic theory fails to develop any insight into deep structures. But my methodology differs slightly from theirs because of my view that an econometrics based on any economic theory would fail in this sense. Economics is an inexact science, incapable of providing a complete set of causal factors to explain any economic phenomenon. I arrive at a different call for more fieldwork in econometrics due to a somewhat different reading of the criticisms of Trygve Haavelmo, Wassily Leontief, the young Tjalling Koopmans and Oskar Morgenstern. These economists not only shared the idea that economic structure is different in nature from natural laws and that statistical analysis alone is not enough to arrive at knowledge of this structure, but also that economic theory as an additional source of knowledge would not be sufficient either. Another additional source of knowledge is needed—that is, field expertise.