Natural environmental disclosures: strategic responses by Port Moresby Stock Exchange entities

This paper discusses the components of a simplified natural environment disclosure (NED) index that accommodates a developing country setting, and examines the level of NED in annual reports of all Port Moresby Stock Exchange (POMSoX) entities of Papua New Guinea for 2002. The results of the study found a low level of NED consistent with what Brown and Tower (2002) coin a traditional reporting model, although POMSoX entities showed a much higher level of NED than their Pacific Island Country counterparts. A number of conventional accounting predictors were put forward to explain the level of NED. None of the predictors explained aggregated NED, but some of the predictors, most notably stock exchange listing, explained some individual components of NED. The very low level of NED flies in the face of much natural environmental regulation in PNG. Clearly, POMSoX regulations, POMSoX entities and international accounting advisers need to focus on the reporting of natural environmental issues if environmental accounting is to take shape in this part of the developing world. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

The Importance of Board Quality in the Event of a CEO Death

We examine board quality and executive replacement decisions around deaths of senior executives. Stock price reactions to executive deaths are positively related to board independence. Controlling for such factors as the deceased's stockholdings, outside blockholdings, board size, and whether the deceased was a founder, board independence is the most significant factor explaining abnormal returns. Board independence is particularly important when there is no apparent successor and firm performance is poor. The results are consistent with independent boards being reluctant to discipline poorly performing incumbent managers, but nevertheless using the opportunity of an executive death to improve the quality of management.     

Is more finance better? Disentangling intermediation and size effects of financial systems

Financial systems all over the world have grown dramatically over recent decades. But is more finance necessarily better? And what concept of financial system – a focus on its size, including both intermediation and other auxiliary “non-intermediation” activities, or a focus on traditional intermediation activity – is relevant for its impact on real sector outcomes? This paper assesses the relationship between the size of the financial system and intermediation, on the one hand, and GDP per capita growth and growth volatility, on the other hand. Based on a sample of 77 countries for the period 1980–2007, we find that intermediation activities increase growth and reduce volatility in the long run. An expansion of the financial sectors along other dimensions has no long-run effect on real sector outcomes. Over shorter time horizons a large financial sector stimulates growth at the cost of higher volatility in high-income countries. Intermediation activities stabilize the economy in the medium run especially in low-income countries. As this is an initial exploration of the link between financial system indicators and growth and volatility, we focus on OLS regressions, leaving issues of endogeneity and omitted variable biases for future research.     

Accounting Ratios and the Cross‐section of Expected Stock Returns

Under clean‐surplus accounting, the log return on a stock can be decomposed into a linear function of the contemporaneous log return on equity, the contemporaneous log dividend–price ratio (if the stock pays a dividend), and both the contemporaneous and lagged values of the log book‐to‐market equity ratio. This paper studies the implications of this decomposition for the cross‐section of conditional expected stock returns. The empirical analysis reveals that the log accounting ratios capture cross‐sectional variation in both the conditional mean and conditional variance of log stock returns, which is consistent with the decomposition. It also brings fresh insights to the relation between firm size (market equity) and conditional expected stock returns. The evidence indicates that the conditional median return increases with firm size, while the conditional return skewness decreases with firm size. Empirically, the skewness effect outweighs the median effect, leading to the well‐documented inverse relation between size and average returns. The results of out‐of‐sample tests suggest that investors could use the information provided by the observed values of the log accounting ratios to formulate more effective portfolio strategies.     

事务所规模、审计行业专长与事务所审计质量传染效应

发生审计失败事务所的审计质量系统性低于未发生审计失败事务所的审计质量,即会计师事务所的审计质量存在传染效应,但该传染效应受到事务所自选择问题的影响;大规模事务所在审计质量传染效应中占据主导地位;事务所行业专长未能抑制审计质量传染效应。     

The role of accruals and cash flows in explaining security returns: Evidence from New Zealand

This paper empirically examines the relative and incremental information content of earnings and cash flows and the role of firm-specific contextual factors in moderating information content in New Zealand. Accounting earnings are considered to be the premier information source for decision making and a substantial volume of literature, primarily in the United States, shows that earnings provide superior information to that of cash flows. However, significant reporting differences in New Zealand warrant and investigation of the role of earnings and cash flows to explain security returns. Results show that (a) earnings have higher explanatory power than cash flows, although the difference is not statistically significant, and (b) both earnings and cash flows have incremental information content for stock returns. Further analysis shows that the valuation role of earnings and cash flows is moderated by firm-specific factors.     

信息技术应用对企业纵向边界的影响--实证研究与讨论

基于交易成本理论的分析表明：信息技术应用节约了企业的内部协调成本和外部交易成本，从而影响企业纵向边界的变动，然而这一理论推断需要进一步的检验。本文利用我国信息技术行业的数据进行实证研究．分析信息技术应用与企业纵向边界变动之间的关系。结果表明：现阶段的信息技术应用使企业纵向边界呈现扩大的趋势。文章据此讨论了中外企业信息化进程的差异和影响．并解释研究结果对企业规模边界和能力边界变动趋势的含义。     

Does Default Probability Matter in Latin American Emerging Markets?

We analyze the impact of default probability in four leading Latin American stock markets: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico. We find no positive default-risk premium except in the case of Brazil, and in fact we find a negative risk premium for Argentina and Mexico. The latter effect tends to fade when the analysis accounts for size and book-to-market variables. Although we find no size effect in any of the markets considered, the book-to-market effect is very strong in all of them, and our results reveal a consistent relationship, analogous to that found in more developed markets, between default probability and the size and book-to-market variables.     

The financing and growth of firms in China and India: Evidence from capital markets

This paper studies the extent to which firms in China and India use capital markets to obtain financing and grow. Using new data on domestic and international capital raising and firm performance, it finds that financial market activity has expanded less since the 1990s than aggregate figures suggest. Relatively few firms raise capital and even fewer attract most of the financing. Moreover, firms that issue equity or bonds are different and behave differently from other publicly listed firms. Among other things, they are typically larger and grow faster. The differences between users and nonusers exist before the capital raising, are associated with the probability of raising capital, and become more pronounced afterward. The size distribution of issuing firms shifts more over time than the distribution of those that do not issue, suggesting little convergence in size among listed firms.     

Influencing public policymaking: Firm‐, industry‐, and country‐level determinants

This paper examines the determinants of firms' public policymaking influence. Using a novel and global database that measures firms' perceived influence over the executive and legislative branches of government, a systematic analysis of the firm‐, industry‐, and country‐level determinants, and interrelationships among these determinants of firms' public policymaking influence is undertaken. The empirical results indicate that large firms perceive they have more public policymaking influence than small firms, but these differences are conditioned by the number of industry competitors and the structure of the country political institution environment. Nonmarket strategy implications that follow from this refined understanding are developed and discussed. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.