Does information asymmetry predict audit fees? Frino, Alex; Palumbo, Riccardo; Rosati, Pierangelo
Accounting and finance (Parkville),
June 2023, Letnik:
63, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
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This study investigates whether and how information asymmetry in the stock market affects the quantum of audit fees paid by auditees. It is based on a sample of 218 US publicly traded companies and ...adopts two well‐established proxies for information asymmetry, namely bid‐ask spread (BAS) and probability of informed trading (PIN). Empirical results provide evidence that, after controlling for all main audit fees determinants, information asymmetry is positively related to the quantum of audit fees paid. Overall, evidence supports the contention that less transparent companies convey higher audit risk, and therefore auditors require higher compensation.
PurposeThe General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) introduces significant data protection obligations on all organizations within the European Union (EU) and those transacting with EU citizens. ...This paper presents the GDPR privacy label and uses two empirical studies to examine the effectiveness of this approach in influencing consumers' privacy perceptions and related behavioral intentions.Design/methodology/approachThe paper tests the efficacy of two GDPR privacy label designs, a consent-based label and a static label. Study 1 examines the effects of each label on perceptions of risk, control and privacy. Study 2 investigates the influence of consumers' privacy perceptions on perceived trustworthiness and willingness to interact with the organization.FindingsThe findings support the potential of GDPR privacy labels for positively influencing perceptions of risk, control, privacy and trustworthiness and enhancing consumers' willingness to transact and disclose data to online organizations.Practical implicationsThe findings are useful for organizations required to comply with the GDPR and present a solution to requirements for transparent communications and explicit consent.Originality/valueThis study examines and demonstrates the efficacy of visualized privacy policies in impacting consumer privacy perceptions and behavioral intentions.
Social media is widely used by accounting firms to achieve a variety of business objectives and is a key enabler of non-market strategies. Socio-political involvement (SPI) involves firms taking ...positions on issues that lack societal consensus, have low information rationality, evolving viewpoints and issue salience, with no clear performance outcomes for firms. SPI may result in firms alienating stakeholders with opposing views, resulting in no or adverse performance outcomes. Accounting firms traditionally may not engage with such issues due to the associated reputational risk. Further, research suggests firm size is one of the most prominent firm-level antecedents of socio-political engagement. As the empirical context for this paper, we choose the Brexit referendum, a significant historical but divisive event with contested social norms. This paper explores the engagement of accounting firms on Twitter with the #Brexit discourse from the referendum announcement to one month after the vote. The objectives of the study are to understand the nature of non-market socio-political engagement by accounting firms in the #Brexit discourse on Twitter, and explore the differences between accounting firms of different size in this context. Our findings suggest that accounting firms engaged in the #Brexit Twitter discourse through a variety of non-market socio-political engagement activities, and that smaller firms tended to engage more than larger firms, most likely reflecting the ideological inclination of firm management. The engagement of accounting firms in socio-political discourse extends our understanding of how accounting firms of all sizes use social media and supports critical accounting and institutional perspectives.
Over 2.8 million people die each year from being overweight or obese, a largely preventable disease. Social media has fundamentally changed the way we communicate, collaborate, consume, and create ...content. The ease with which content can be shared has resulted in a rapid increase in the number of individuals or organisations that seek to influence opinion and the volume of content that they generate. The nutrition and diet domain is not immune to this phenomenon. Unfortunately, from a public health perspective, many of these 'influencers' may be poorly qualified in order to provide nutritional or dietary guidance, and advice given may be without accepted scientific evidence and contrary to public health policy. In this preliminary study, we analyse the 'healthy diet' discourse on Twitter. While using a multi-component analytical approach, we analyse more than 1.2 million English language tweets over a 16-month period in order to identify and characterise the influential actors and discover topics of interest in the discourse. Our analysis suggests that the discourse is dominated by non-health professionals. There is widespread use of bots that pollute the discourse and seek to create a false equivalence on the efficacy of a particular nutritional strategy or diet. Topic modelling suggests a significant focus on diet, nutrition, exercise, weight, disease, and quality of life. Public health policy makers and professional nutritionists need to consider what interventions can be taken in order to counteract the influence of non-professional and bad actors on social media.
Mobile contact tracing applications have emerged as a potential solution to track and reduce the transmission of viruses such as Covid‐19. These applications require the disclosure of potentially ...sensitive personal information thus generating understandable implications for personal privacy. This research aims to determine the factors driving acceptance of these applications, with acceptance represented by three distinct variables, namely usage intentions, willingness to disclose personal data, and willingness to rely on health advice. The study examines the influence of perceived privacy, social influence, and benefits on acceptance of contact tracing applications among a sample of 1,114 Brazilian citizens. The study leverages social contract theory to demonstrate the importance of perceived control and perceived surveillance in the formation of individuals' perceptions of privacy. Integrating privacy calculus theory with social contract theory to include reciprocity and social influence, our findings suggest that perceived privacy, reciprocal benefits, and social influence all positively influence individuals' intentions to download or continue the use of contact tracing applications, while intentions to disclose information are influenced by adoption intentions, perceived privacy, and reciprocal benefits and individuals' willingness to rely on contact tracing applications for health advice is influenced by reciprocal benefits and disclosure intentions.
England's 'shock' exit from the Euro 2016 Football Championship and the UK electorate's decision to (Br)exit from the EU occurred almost simultaneously, providing an interesting lens through which to ...examine unfolding tensions in the UK and its component identities - all the more so given the presence of two of the three other component countries of the UK, Wales and Northern Ireland, at the Championship. Our analysis of 34,324 original tweets featuring both the hashtag #Euro2016 and #Brexit shows a clear tendency to conflate British and English identities in the context of Brexit, a conflation coloured by largely negative characteristics. We pay particular attention to how recurring themes concerning leadership, accountability and immigration are articulated in the context of both sporting and political events. In addition, we examine the significance of the structural logic of social media in these discussions of the sport-nation nexus, with reference to vortextuality and mediatization.
This study investigates the effect of news media coverage on trading activity in, and the liquidity of, target firms' shares around acquisition announcements. We use the number of articles published ...in four of the UK's main newspapers as a proxy for media coverage. Our dataset includes 350 UK domestic acquisition deals between 1996 and 2014. The results of our analysis suggest that media coverage is positively associated with target firms' trading activity and stock liquidity. This is consistent with the media playing a key role in mitigating information asymmetry in the financial markets. This study contributes to the literature on stock market reactions to acquisition announcements by investigating the effect of media coverage on trading activity and stock liquidity beyond the price run-up, and by providing additional insights into the UK market which traditionally attracts less attention than the US market.
Exploring online criticisms of the "take the knee" protest during "Euro 2020", this article examines how alt- and far-right conspiracies were both constructed and communicated via the social media ...platform, Twitter. By providing a novel exploration of alt-right conspiracies during an international football tournament, a qualitative thematic analysis of 1,388 original tweets relating to Euro 2020 was undertaken. The findings reveal how, in criticisms levelled at both "wokeism" and the Black Lives Matter movement, anti-white criticisms of the "take the knee" protest were embroiled in alt-right conspiracies that exposed an assumed Cultural Marxist, "woke agenda" in the tournament's organisation and mainstream media coverage. In conclusion, it is argued that conspiratorial discourses, associated with the alt-right, provided a framework through which the protest could be understood. This emphasises how the significance of conspiracy functions to promote the wider dissemination of alt-right ideology across popular cultural contexts, such as sport.
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