We examine whether three tax system characteristics—required book-tax conformity, worldwide versus territorial approach, and perceived strength of enforcement—impact corporate tax avoidance across ...countries after controlling for firm-specific factors previously shown to be associated with tax avoidance (i.e., performance, size, operating costs, leverage, growth, the presence of multinational operations, and industry) and for other cross-country factors (i.e., statutory corporate tax rates, earnings volatility, and institutional factors). We find that, on average, firms avoid taxes less when required book-tax conformity is higher, a worldwide approach is used, and tax enforcement is perceived to be stronger. However, the relations between tax avoidance and all three tax systems characteristics are contextual and depend on the extent to which management compensation comes from variable pay, including bonuses, stock awards, and stock options.
In this study, we examine the benefits of membership in an accounting firm association, network, or alliance (collectively referred to as "an association"). Associations provide member accounting ...firms with numerous benefits, including access to the expertise of professionals from other independent member firms, joint conferences and technical trainings, assistance in dealing with staffing and geographic limitations, and the ability to use the association name in marketing materials. We expect these benefits to result in higher-quality audits and higher audit fees (or audit fee premiums). Using hand-collected data on association membership, we find that association member firms conduct higher-quality audits than nonmember firms, where audit quality is proxied for by fewer Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) inspection deficiencies and fewer financial statement misstatements, as well as less extreme absolute discretionary accruals and lower positive discretionary accruals. We also find that audit fees are higher for clients of member firms than for clients of nonmember firms, suggesting that clients are willing to pay an audit fee premium to engage association member audit firms. Finally, we find that member firm audits are of similar quality to a size-matched sample of Big 4 audits, but member firm clients pay lower fee premiums than do Big 4 clients. Our inferences are robust to the use of company sizematched control samples, audit firm size-matched control samples, propensity score matching, two-stage least squares regression, and to analyses that consider changes in association membership. Our findings should be of interest to regulators because they suggest that association membership assists small audit firms in overcoming barriers to auditing larger audit clients. In addition, our findings should be informative to audit committees when making auditor selection decisions, and to investors and accounting researchers interested in the relation between audit firm type and audit quality.
In this study, we explore the association between company reputation and the likelihood of a financial statement restatement (i.e., a revealed misstatement). Reputation can bring real economic ...benefits to companies, and once impaired it is costly to rebuild. Because of this, companies with strong reputations have incentives to provide higher-quality financial statements. We focus on restatements because they are one of the most visible forms of impaired financial reporting quality, and we suggest that company reputation concerns will influence the reporting process and reduce financial statement misstatements (and ultimately restatements). We proxy for company reputation using measures based on Fortune's America's Most Admired Companies List. For a sample of 8,081 observations from 1995 through 2009, we find that companies with higher reputation scores are less likely to misstate their financial statements after controlling for chief executive officer tenure, corporate governance, and audit fees (a proxy for audit effort). In addition, we find that companies with higher reputations have better accruals quality. We also find that company reputation is positively associated with audit fees even after controlling for corporate governance. These results are consistent with company reputation having an important effect on financial reporting quality and with the effect of reputation being distinct from that of corporate governance. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
In this study, we document evidence on the relation between auditor tenure and earnings quality using the dispersion and sign of both absolute Jones-model abnormal accruals and absolute current ...accruals as proxies for earnings quality. Our study is motivated by calls for "mandatory auditor rotation," which are based on concerns that longer auditor tenure reduces earnings quality. Multivariate results, controlling for firm age, size, industry growth, cash flows, auditor type (Big N versus non-Big N), industry, and year, generally suggest higher earnings quality with longer auditor tenure. We interpret our results as suggesting that, in the current environment, longer auditor tenure, on average, results in auditors placing greater constraints on extreme management decisions in the reporting of financial performance.
We investigate whether companies with better reputations enjoy a lower cost of equity financing. Using a sample of 9,276 large US companies from 1987 to 2011 and the reputation rankings from
Fortune
...’s “America’s Most Admired Companies” list, we find strong evidence that companies with higher reputation scores enjoy a lower cost of equity capital even after controlling for other factors that determine the cost of equity. In addition, we find that the effect of reputation on the cost of equity increases with the degree of information asymmetry, consistent with the reputation rankings providing information about company quality. We also find that changes in reputation are associated with subsequent changes in the company’s investor base, consistent with reputation rankings affecting investor recognition and improving risk sharing. We contribute to the cost of capital literature by identifying a unique determinant of the cost of equity and to the reputation literature by demonstrating an important benefit that derives from creating and maintaining a high reputation.
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) comment letters provide independent and timely feedback on the clarity of disclosures and on the extent to which filings comply with Generally Accepted ...Accounting Principles and SEC reporting regulations. We investigate factors that affect the probability of receiving a 10-K comment letter, the extent of comments received, and the cost of remediation. We find that in addition to factors explicitly stated to increase SEC scrutiny in Section 408 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, low profitability, high complexity, engaging a small audit firm, and weaknesses in governance are positively associated with the receipt of a comment letter, the extent of comments, and the cost of remediation. The probability that the comment letter results in a restatement is higher for smaller companies and for companies engaging a small audit firm. We also provide evidence that comments relating to accounting issues result in higher remediation costs, largely due to the additional time required to resolve comments relating to classification issues and fair value issues. Our findings should be of interest to stakeholders who use SEC comment letters to assess disclosure quality and reporting compliance, and to managers and other stakeholders impacted by costs associated with the SEC's review process.
Firm managers make ethical decisions regarding the form and quality of disclosure. Disclosure can have long-term implications for performance, earnings manipulation, and even fraud. We investigate ...the impact of venture capital (VC) backing on the quality and informativeness of disclosure controls and procedures for newly public companies. We find that these controls and procedures are stronger, as evidenced by fewer material weaknesses in internal control under Section 302 of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act, when companies are VC-backed. Moreover, these disclosures are informative and are more likely to be followed by subsequent financial statement restatements than are disclosures made by non-VC-backed IPO companies.
We examine the associations between audit partner pre-client and client-specific experience and audit quality using data from Taiwan, where signing audit partner names are disclosed. Using ...discretionary accruals and interest rate spreads to proxy for audit quality and perceptions of audit quality, respectively, we find that both pre-client and client-specific experience improve audit quality and creditor perceptions of audit quality. We also find that audit partner pre-client experience is positively associated with audit quality early in the engagement, but not when the partner has been with the client for at least five years. Our findings provide evidence consistent with the assumption underlying the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board’s decision to require the disclosure of engagement partner names. They also suggest that pre-client experience cannot completely mitigate the loss of client-specific knowledge when partner or audit firm turnover occurs.
In this study, we examine whether banks’ use of the loan loss provision (LLP) to manage earnings is associated with (a) the extent to which banks hold assets subject to fair value reporting and (b) ...the use of an industry specialist auditor. We find that banks with a greater proportion of assets subject to fair value reporting (i.e., higher fair value exposure) use less LLP-based earnings management but more transaction-based earnings management (i.e., earnings management achieved by timing the realization of gains/losses). We also find that banks engaging industry specialist auditors use less LLP-based earnings management. Our findings suggest that banks’ use of the LLP to manage earnings is more limited when they have access to alternative earnings management tools and when they engage an auditor with more industry knowledge. Our results should be informative to regulators, members of the banking industry, and academics interested in the earnings management behavior of banks.
Accounting rules for valuing retained interest from securitizations require management to make assumptions concerning discount rates, default rates, and prepayment rates. These assumptions provide ...management with discretion to determine the “gain on sale” of the receivables. We investigate whether CEO compensation is less sensitive to securitization gains than to other earnings components in the presence of proxies for how independent (outsiders, females, fewer CEO-selected directors) and informed (financial expertise) directors are. Overall, our results do not suggest that better “monitoring” reduces earnings management or CEO pay-sensitivity to reported securitization gains. Our results suggest that CEOs are rewarded for the gains they report and boards do not intervene.
