What Drives the Consequences of Intentional Misstatements? Evidence from Rating Analysts’ Reactions

This paper aims to identify the mechanisms through which intentional misstatements adversely affect firms by analyzing rating analysts’ reaction to misstatements. In order to identify the mechanisms through which the misstatement affects firms’ credit ratings, we analyze the content of rating reports. Rating analysts are concerned about seven different mechanisms. They are most concerned about misstatement‐related violations of debt covenants that increase a firm's liquidity risk. We find that, subsequent to an intentional misstatement becoming publicly known, credit ratings of misreporting firms are adversely affected for up to seven years. The adverse impact of an intentional misstatement on a firm's credit rating is most pronounced in cases in which rating analysts mention concerns about misstatement‐related violations of covenants. Our results suggest that these covenant violations are the most severe mechanism through which misstatements adversely affect firms’ creditworthiness.     

A People’s History of Leisure Studies: Leisure,the Tool of Racecraft

Abstract

The pernicious existence of race serves as the underlying force in modern societies. As such, the aim of this discussion is to postulate that leisure is a tool of racecraft: 1) the articulation of power, 2) the erection of places of demarcation, and 3) reification of the racial order. What is presented here is in one part a re-examination of seminal texts on Race in leisure studies and another part a case study of the 1919 Chicago race riots and the Biloxi wade-ins from 1959 to 1963. Both of these historical cases illustrate the simple act of recreational swimming in legally or socially segregated waters and pools outraged the White social order in the United States. This history is mirrored in the present day, not as another isolated horrible aside that arises from time-to-time in leisure but rather as the seemingly perpetual role of leisure to maintain the proper racial order, racecraft.     

Enforceability of non-compete covenants,discretionary investments,and financial reporting practices: Evidence from a natural experiment

Non-compete covenants are widely used in employment contracts to promote employee stability. Using legal amendments of non-compete enforceability as a natural experiment, we find that as non-compete enforceability increases, firms display an increased likelihood of meeting short-term earnings benchmarks, lower discretionary expenditures, and declining future performance. These effects are more pronounced when CEOs have lower ability or shorter tenures, and when firms have more growth opportunities or operate in localized industries. Our results suggest that managers actively adapt investment and financial reporting practices to the changing environment that affects their contractual relations with firms.     

Conservative financial reporting, debt covenants, and the agency costs of debt

Considerable research has documented the role of debt covenants and conservative financial accounting in addressing agency conflicts between lenders and borrowers. Beatty, A., Weber, J., and Yu, J. [2008. Conservatism and debt. Journal of Accounting and Economics, forthcoming] document interesting, but mixed, findings on the relation between debt covenants and conservative accounting, and the extent to which the two contracting mechanisms act as substitutes or complements. In this paper, I discuss the economic roles of financial reporting, debt covenants, and conservatism within the debt contracting environment, and attempt to fit BWY's findings within this context.     

Stock‐bond return co‐movement and accounting information

I examine how an important attribute of financial reporting quality, i.e., accounting conservatism, affects the sensitivity of corporate bond returns to changes in the value of equity (i.e., the hedge ratio). The correlation between stock and bond returns (co‐movement) is a fundamental input for asset allocation decisions as it determines the diversification benefits of bonds relative to equities within an investment portfolio. According to structural models of credit risk, co‐movement should be generally positive, but lower when the risk of wealth transfers from bondholders to shareholders is severe. I find that firms that report conservative earnings and use covenants in their bond contracts exhibit on average stronger co‐movement. This result is consistent with conservatism providing bondholders with a credible and contractible signal that improves monitoring, thus preventing wealth transfers.     

Asset Maturity, Debt Covenants, and Debt Maturity Choice

The existing research on debt‐maturity under asymmetric information has focused on the impact of differential information regarding asset quality on the debt maturity decision. This research has generally indicated the optimality of short‐term debt financing as a vehicle of mitigating the adverse selection problem. In this paper, I consider the impact of information asymmetry regarding the maturity structure of cash flows on the debt maturity decision. In this context, long‐term debt is generally the form of debt financing most effective in alleviating the adverse selection problem. I also show that costs of adverse selection may induce some mismatching of debt maturity and asset maturity in the presence of significant transaction costs.     

Restrictive land covenants

Even though land-use convenants are a pervasive feature in residential land markets, they are typically subsumed into the economist's picture of zoning and related land-use regulation. In contrast to the traditional approach, the premise of this study is that land covenants differ from zoning in important respects. This study examines the characteristics of covenants as an institution and why it exists as a distinct method of private control in land markets. The approach taken here emphasizes the role of credible commitment in explaining why covenants differ from both zoning and private contracts among individuals. The paper also examines why covenants tend to vary spatially within urban areas, presenting two theories to evaluate the evidence from an urban housing market.     

The Cost of Bond Covenant Restrictions on the Disposition of Assets

The cost of bond covenants restricting the dispositions of assets are examined in this study. Using an option pricing framework, it is shown that the cost of compliance could be high if restrictions are placed on the sale of common stock holdings. Similar results can be obtained by using a simple cash flow approach when calculating the effect on restrictions on the sale of depreciable assets. These costs somewhat offset the tax advantages of debt.     

Debt contracting and the goodwill debate

Extant literature offers mixed evidence on the quality of goodwill after the promulgation of SFAS 141/2 (Li and Sloan, 2017; Lee, 2011; Chen et al., 2008). We reconcile these conflicting findings by examining the role of managerial incentives in determining the efficacy of SFAS 141/2 in improving the quality of goodwill reporting. Using the context of debt contracting, we find that the value-relevance of goodwill is higher for firms that include goodwill in debt covenants in the post-SFAS 141/2 period. We also find that in the post-period, firms that include goodwill in their debt contracts appear to take timelier impairments. In addition, debt contracts in these firms also have tighter covenant thresholds, further corroborating the increased value-relevance of goodwill under the current impairment regime. We also document a relatively higher frequency of covenant violation for firms that use goodwill in their debt contract in the post-SFAS 141/2 period. Taken together, our results inform ongoing discussions regarding the accounting for goodwill and provide new insight into understanding of debt contracting and the role of accounting standards therein.     

The impact of corporate fraud on director‐interlocked firms: Evidence from bank loans

We examine the impact of corporate fraud committed by one firm (the “fraudulent firm”) on other firms with interlocking directors (the “interlocked firms”), focusing on the debtholder side. We argue that the revelation of a fraudulent firm's fraud can damage the reputation of the interlocked firms because corporate governance can propagate via director interlocks. Empirically, we find that the interlocked firms' cost of debt is higher and the loan covenants become stricter after the fraud cases of the fraudulent firms are revealed. Consistent with the corporate governance propagation explanation, our results are weaker (stronger) for interlocked firms that have better (worse) pre‐event corporate governance standards. Our findings suggest that corporate fraud of fraudulent firms can affect other firms through director‐interlocks beyond shareholder value.