CAP Forum on Forensic Accounting in the Post‐Enron World: Education for Investigative and Forensic Accounting*/FORMATION ET JURICOMPTABILITÉ

Recent financial scandals have raised the awareness that accountants should be alert to potential fraud and other economic disputes and can provide significant assistance in preventing, investigating, and resolving such matters. Forensic accountants provide these services with knowledge of court requirements and proceedings so that effective legal action is possible, even though most actions are concluded without the involvement of the courts. Although forensic accounting was growing in importance even before Enron and the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act, the ensuing tightening of the securities regulations in both Canada and the United States triggered recognition that accounting students and professionals need a fuller understanding of fraud and other economic crimes, and how to find, prevent, and resolve them, as well as the career choices that could be involved. While some of this material is covered in auditing texts and courses, emerging expectations will require the enhancement and restructuring of forensic accounting education within university programs, and will encourage more interest in graduate specialist professional designations. This paper has two objectives: to offer insights into the design and delivery of forensic accounting programs, and into the availability of professional programs; and to provide some exploratory evidence on the type of services currently rendered by investigative and forensic accountants in Canada.     

Corporate Disclosure of Environmental Liability Information: Theory and Evidence*

Abstract. The decision to disclose information concerning a firm's environmental liabilities is modeled as a sequential game involving the firm, a capital market, and outside stakeholders who can impose proprietary (political) costs on the firm. A partial disclosure equilibrium is derived in which firms reveal information strategically, maximizing the share-value net of expected political costs. Inherent uncertainty regarding the existence and size of the liabilities creates a setting where outsiders are uncertain if management is informed about these liabilities, so firms can plausibly withhold “bad news”, that is, they do not disclose liabilities that exceed a threshold level. Three novel hypotheses are that a firm is more likely to disclose as (1) its pollution propensity increases, (2) outsiders' knowledge of its environmental liabilities increases, and (3) the risk of incurring proprietary costs decreases. Empirical support is found for the hypotheses, based on the accounting disclosures made by sample firms selected from the records of the Ontario Ministry of the Environment and Energy. Improved accounting and auditing standards for environmental disclosure would build on at least three implications of the study:

• 1 To the extent that inherent uncertainty leaves managers with discretion as to what to disclose, the partial disclosure equilibrium result suggests that not all firms will comply with disclosure standards.
• 2 Publishing broad environmental performance indicators for companies in nonaccounting outlets would increase public awareness of a manager's private information endowment, making voluntary accounting disclosures of the liabilities more likely.
• 3 If a significant decline in stakeholder tolerance of pollution occurs, the expected proprietary costs of disclosing increase, and companies become less likely to disclose.

     

Earnings Quality under Rules‐ versus Principles‐based Accounting Standards: A Test of the Skinner Hypothesis / LA QUALITÉ DES RÉSULTATS SELON QUE LES NORMES COMPTABLES SONT AXÉES SUR LES RÈGLES OU SUR LES PRINCIPES: VÉRIFICATION DE L'HYPOTHÈSE DE SKINNER*

We provide preliminary evidence, consistent with Skinner (1995), that Canada's relatively principles‐based GAAP yield higher accrual quality than the United States' relatively rules‐based GAAP. These results stem from a comparison of the Dechow‐Dichev (2002) measure of accrual quality for cross‐listed Canadian firms reporting under both Canadian and U.S. GAAP. However, we document lower accrual quality for Canadian firms reporting under U.S. GAAP than for U.S. firms, which are subject to stronger U.S. oversight, reporting under U.S. GAAP. The latter results suggest that stronger U.S. oversight compensates for inferior accrual quality associated with rules‐based GAAP. Consistent with the positive effect of Canada's principles‐based GAAP and the offsetting negative effect of Canada's weaker oversight, we find no overall difference in accrual quality between Canadian firms reporting under Canadian GAAP and U.S. firms reporting under U.S. GAAP. Our results imply that (1) policymakers who wish to compare the effectiveness of oversight across jurisdictions must control for the GAAP effect; and (2) accounting standard‐setters who wish to compare the effectiveness of principles‐ versus rules‐based GAAP must control for oversight strength.     

Can Markets Discipline Government Agencies? Evidence from the Weather Derivatives Market

We analyze the role of financial markets in shaping the incentives of government agencies using a unique empirical setting: the weather derivatives market. We show that the introduction of weather derivative contracts on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) improves the accuracy of temperature measurement by 13% to 20% at the underlying weather stations. We argue that temperature‐based financial markets generate additional scrutiny of the temperature data measured by the National Weather Service, which motivates the agency to minimize measurement errors. Our results have broader implications: the visibility and scrutiny generated by financial markets can potentially improve the efficiency of government agencies.     

When Does Information Asymmetry Affect the Cost of Capital?

This paper examines when information asymmetry among investors affects the cost of capital in excess of standard risk factors. When equity markets are perfectly competitive, information asymmetry has no separate effect on the cost of capital. When markets are imperfect, information asymmetry can have a separate effect on firms’ cost of capital. Consistent with our prediction, we find that information asymmetry has a positive relation with firms’ cost of capital in excess of standard risk factors when markets are imperfect and no relation when markets approximate perfect competition. Overall, our results show that the degree of market competition is an important conditioning variable to consider when examining the relation between information asymmetry and cost of capital.     

Political Connections and the Informativeness of Insider Trades

We analyze the trading of corporate insiders at leading financial institutions during the 2007 to 2009 financial crisis. We find strong evidence of a relation between political connections and informed trading during the period in which Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds were disbursed, and that the relation is most pronounced among corporate insiders with recent direct connections. Notably, we find evidence of abnormal trading by politically connected insiders 30 days in advance of TARP infusions, and that these trades anticipate the market reaction to the infusion. Our results suggest that political connections can facilitate opportunistic behavior by corporate insiders.     

Public Information and Coordination: Evidence from a Credit Registry Expansion

This paper provides evidence that lenders to a firm close to distress have incentives to coordinate: lower financing by one lender reduces firm creditworthiness and causes other lenders to reduce financing. To isolate the coordination channel from lenders' joint reaction to new information, we exploit a natural experiment that forced lenders to share negative private assessments about their borrowers. We show that lenders, while learning nothing new about the firm, reduce credit in anticipation of other lenders' reaction to the negative news about the firm. The results show that public information exacerbates lender coordination and increases the incidence of firm financial distress.     

Nonbusiness Bankruptcies and the Law: Some Empirical Results

A model of risk reduction is used to analyze personal bankruptcy rates. The model shows how state and federal laws can affect the quantity of resources that lenders devote to reducing the risk of making bad loans. Unanticipated events cause changes in bankruptcy rates because they alter the costs and benefits of bankruptcy to both creditors and debtors. Results of other studies are shown to be consistent with this model. Data for 1980 are then used to test the model. Asset exemption laws have a significant impact on bankruptcy rates that is consistent with the model. Unanticipated economic events are also found to have significant effects on bankruptcy rates.