Parallels between US and UK cost accountancy in the World War I era

Both the US and UK governments attempted desperate measures during World War I in an effort to maintain wartime production levels of necessary commodities and to allow for their economical purchase by the military. Loft (1986a, 1986b, 1990) has studied the British experience in depth, concluding that UK cost accountancy 'came into the light' as a result. It might be expected that similar developments would have occurred in America with the activities of the War Industries Board. In both countries, national associations were established in the immediate aftermath of the war to promote the professional standing of cost accountants. This paper utilizes archival materials in an effort to investigate whether US cost accountancy was developing more sophisticated costing techniques as Loft has claimed for the UK, or whether practitioners in this country were left 'still cursing the darkness'. Our findings suggest that cost accountancy developed in parallel fashion in both countries. US and UK cost accounting professionalism was dominated by the presence of leading financial accounting practitioners, and in both countries the movement towards more sophisticated costing techniques was gradual rather than dramatic.     

美国与香港创业板的比较分析及对我国创业板的启示

本文首先介绍美国纳斯达克市场以及香港创业板市场的概况并着重分析了两者的相同点和差异点。进而根据对比结果,总结两者的经验对我国创业板市场建立的启示,为我国的创业板市场的建立提供建议。     

Diversity and inclusion: Evidence from corporate inventors

Inclusion is often considered a crux of diversity management. However, little is known about how board diversity affects corporate performance through organizational inclusive behavior. Using the inventor-level patenting data, we find that firms with more ethnic minority directors attract more productive ethnic minority inventors and promote greater collaboration among inventors, leading to more patents and patents with greater market value. Our findings are robust to a battery of sensitivity tests. Overall, our study offers new evidence that racially diverse boards cultivate inclusive environment for inventors to succeed.     

Board secretary and market information efficiency: Evidence from corporate site visits

Using the setting of corporate site visits, this study examines the information interpretation role of board secretaries on market information efficiency. We find that the presence of the board secretary during corporate site visits can significantly improve the information content of such visits. From the perspective of information interpretation ability, when the board secretary has a dual role, receives high relative compensation, and has a high level of education, his or her participation in site visits has a greater effect on improving the informativeness of such visits. From the perspective of information asymmetry, the information interpretation role of the board secretary is more pronounced when the level of information asymmetry between the firm and its investors is high. Further analysis shows that when the board secretary attends more site visits, the level of analyst forecast error is lower. In summary, we confirm the information interpretation role of board secretaries, which is useful for opening the “black box” of their participation in the information assimilation process and for better understanding of how to improve market information efficiency.     

Drivers and consequences of sustainability committee existence? Evidence from the hospitality and tourism industry

This study's objective is twofold: (1) to investigate whether board characteristics predict the existence of a sustainability committee, and (2) to examine whether the establishment of sustainability committees stimulates sustainability reporting, external assurance, and the adoption of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) framework in hospitality and tourism (H&T) firms. For this purpose, the data was derived from the Thomson Reuters Eikon database for publicly traded H&T firms from 2013 to 2018. The results indicate that while board size is a significant predictor of sustainability committee establishment, female and independent directors are not. Furthermore, the H&T firms with a sustainability committee are more likely to issue a sustainability report, to get an independent assurance statement on sustainability reporting, and to follow GRI guidelines in configuring sustainability report content and structure. Overall, the results suggest important implications to help H&T firms achieve sustainable goals and to design their boards accordingly.     

所有权安排与监事会治理效率——基于中国上市公司的实证发现

以2002年到2004年中国A股上市公司为样本,本文发现国有上市公司的监事会治理绩效要劣于非国有企业.但是,在国有企业中,随着第一大股东持股比例上升,监事会治理绩效逐渐增强.而在非国有企业中,随着第一大股东持股比例上升,监事会治理绩效则有轻微下降的趋势.这表明,监事会制度是一种依赖于产权安排的相机治理机制.     

Are corporate governance attributes associated with accounting conservatism?

This article investigates the association between the board of directors, the audit committee and the external auditor (as well as an aggregate governance index) and the extent of conservatism evident in Australian firms’ financial reporting. Overall, the results provide only weak evidence that firms with certain governance characteristics report more conservatively. Evidence of any such link is restricted to measures of board composition and leadership, and even then the results are sensitive to the method used to measure the extent of conservatism in financial reporting.     

董事会治理与企业技术创新:理论与实证

本文在代理理论的框架内考察了公司治理之董事会治理与企业技术创新投入的关系,并基于2004-2008年501家中国上市公司的数据对此进行了实证研究。结果表明:1)董事会规模与企业技术创新投入存在不显著的负相关关系;2)独立董事占比与企业技术创新投入存在显著的正相关关系,独立董事占比较高的企业其技术创新投入要显著高于独立董事占比较低的企业;3)董事长与总经理两职分离的制度安排对企业技术创新投入有显著的积极影响,两职分离的企业其技术创新投入要显著高于两职合一的企业;4)董事会股权激励对企业技术创新存在积极影响,董事会股权激励水平越高,企业技术创新投入越多,但这种发现仅具有较低的统计显著性。     

Independent boards and innovation

Much research has suggested that independent boards of directors are more effective in reducing agency costs and improving firm governance. How they influence innovation is less clear. Relying on regulatory changes, we show that firms that transition to independent boards focus on more crowded and familiar areas of technology. They patent and claim more and receive more total future citations to their patents. However, the citation increase comes mainly from incremental patents in the middle of the citation distribution; the numbers of uncited and highly cited patents—arguably associated with riskier innovation strategies—do not change significantly.     

The effects of employee stock option plans on operating performance in Chinese firms

As a part of the ongoing liberalization of the marketplace, Chinese regulators adopted the guideline called “Regulation of Equity Incentive Plans (trial)” to allow firms to provide employee incentives through employee stock option plans. Firms began initiating the plans in 2006. We investigate the impact of these plans on firm performance by comparing option-award firms with similar non-award matching firms. The change in ROE for the option-award firms is significantly higher than the matching firms. This is primarily due to their performance holding up better during the global financial crisis while the matching firms’ performance deteriorates. The stock price of these firms shows a positive reaction to the announcement, but no long-term abnormal returns. The better ROE performance for option-award firms is strong for subsets of the sample that are likely to benefit more from incentivized employees; specifically, privately owned firms, firms with higher board independence, and smaller firms. After various robustness tests, we conclude that the higher performance comes from the employee incentives, rather than earnings manipulation, a replacement of cash compensation, a binding of employees to executives, or gaming vesting periods.