Non-GAAP reporting following debt covenant violations

Review of Accounting Studies - We investigate whether firms change their non-GAAP reporting practices after debt covenant violations. We find that the likelihood that a firm will disclose non-GAAP...     

Real Incentive Effects of Soft Information

Both soft, noncontractible, and hard, contractible, information are informative about managerial ability and future firm performance. If a manager's future compensation depends on expectations of ability or future performance, then the manager has implicit incentives to affect the information. We examine the real incentive effects of soft information in a dynamic agency with limited commitment. When long-term contracts are renegotiated, the rewards for future performance inherent in long-term contracts allow the principal partial control over the implicit incentives. This is because the soft information affects the basis for contract renegotiation. With short-term contracts, the principal has no control over the basis for contract negotiation, and thus long-term contracts generally dominate short-term contracts. With long-term contracts, the principal's control over implicit incentives is characterized in terms of effective contracting on an implicit aggregation of the soft information that arises from predicting (forming expectations of) future performance. We provide sufficient conditions for soft information to have no real incentive effects. In general, implicit incentives not controllable by the principal include fixed effects, such as career concerns driven by labor markets external to the agency. When controllable incentives span the fixed effects of career concerns, the latter have no real effects with regard to total managerial incentives—they would optimally be the same with or without career concerns. Our analysis suggests empirical tests for estimating career concerns that should explicitly incorporate noncontractible information.     

Without `Reinventing the Wheel': Business Accounting Applied to the Public Sector

This article considers why a business accounting model was applied in an early adoption of public-sector accrual accounting. The history of that change shows that large private-sector consulting firms were active in the promotion and implementation of a commercial model of public-sector accrual accounting. It is argued here that the consulting firms' actions are best understood using concepts of mimetic isomorphism and the interplay between self-interest and perceived public interest. They formed an epistemic community in which self-interest was present but with a zealous belief that private-sector accounting was an inherently righteous objective for the public sector.     

Accounting Policies in Agencies with Moral Hazard and Renegotiation

We emphasize the role of accounting policies, and their audit, in an earnings management setting. We use a two–period agency in which three frictions interact: the agent privately observes action (or effort) supply and output, and the initial contract is subject to renegotiation. This creates a setting in which both players' behavior is of concern, and, importantly, information rationing is efficient. Moreover, this information rationing is directly interpretable as being produced by an accounting policy whose application is ensured by an auditor.     

Strategic Political Participation and Redistribution

The purpose of this paper is to study formation of support and opposition to redistribution. We analyze a society with two groups of citizens and a government. The government distributes income from one group to the other in response to political pressure. The interaction between the groups is modeled as a two-stage game. In stage 1, the groups decide if they want to be politically active. In stage 2, the active group or groups seek influence on the direction and size of the transfer. We demonstrate that supporters of redistribution are always politically active but that opposition is often absent. Moreover, when opposition is absent there is a strong tendency for underdissipation of the transfer, while political competition typically leads to overdissipation.     

Policy implications of research on non-GAAP reporting

Over the past two decades, the regulatory landscape for non-GAAP reporting has evolved significantly. Despite a temporary decline in the frequency of non-GAAP reporting following Regulation G, the incidence of non-GAAP disclosure has continued to increase steadily, leading to a current all-time high in reporting activity. This proliferation of non-GAAP disclosure has captured the attention of standard setters and regulators in recent years. This paper provides an academic perspective on policy implications for both regulation and standard setting. We contend that current Compliance and Disclosure Interpretations (C&DIs) of the SEC staff may perhaps have gone too far in restricting certain types of non-GAAP disclosures. As a result, we advocate a slight relaxation of the current enforcement of Regulation G. We agree with FASB proposals for greater disaggregation in the income statement to allow for more transparency in non-GAAP reporting. Finally, we believe the PCAOB should consider requiring auditors to take a more direct role with respect to non-GAAP disclosures.     

Political regimes and foreign intervention

We present a theory of endogenous political regimes that emphasizes foreign direct investment as a motive for foreign governments to either induce regime transitions or promote regime consolidations. We characterize different forms of foreign intervention and identify the conditions under which they occur. We highlight new channels through which economic factors affect political regime choices. Foreign intervention is most likely to originate from countries where the government has a substantial pro-investor bias and to be directed at destinations where FDI is highly profitable and where income inequality is high. Foreign-sponsored coups d'état are more likely to be directed at democratic governments of poor countries. In destinations where FDI is highly profitable but the domestic elite is weak, foreign intervention tends to be aimed at stabilizing dictatorships. We relate the analysis to evidence on foreign intervention from around the world.     

Exploring the landscape of wind farm developments; local area characteristics and planning process outcomes in rural England

Despite broad public support for wind energy in principle, windfarm developments are often met with local opposition. There is theoretical, case-based and anecdotal evidence to suggest that ‘the local’ is relevant for planning process outcomes, but the nature and extent of this relevance is not so clear. We embark on an initial exploration of local factors that, on aggregate, may be of relevance to planning outcomes of proposed windfarms in rural England. Applying a broad scanning approach we use an existing small area GIS dataset of 117 variables related to education, health, demography, employment and housing. We identify a number of strong associations, and discuss to what extent these make sense in the light of existing literature on environmental equity and social capital, or throw up questions for further study. Notwithstanding the methodological caveats of this explorative study, and the scope for more in-depth analysis, our findings suggests that beyond the myriad of individual planning cases, the emerging landscape of wind energy development in England is markedly uneven, and sometimes inequitable. Evidence of the latter emerges notably through the strong significance of local democratic deficit (i.e. low voter turn-out) as a predictor of a ‘positive’ planning outcome for windfarms and the further strengthening of predictive associations at the appeal stage.