Knowledge that Transforms

Abstract In this study, we examine whether internal control over financial reporting affects firm operational efficiency. We find that operational efficiency, derived from frontier analysis, is significantly lower among firms with material weaknesses in internal control relative to firms without such weaknesses. We also find that the remediation of material weaknesses leads to an improvement in operational efficiency. Additional analyses indicate that the negative effect of material weaknesses on operational efficiency is stronger for firms with a greater demand for higher quality information for decision making, for weaknesses that are deemed to be more severe, and to a certain extent, for smaller firms. Overall, our study extends the literature by presenting systematic evidence on the effect of effective internal control on operational efficiency and informs the debate over the costs and benefits of the internal control reporting requirements under the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act of 2002.

Abstract Contracting between tax entities and tax professionals occurs millions of times every year, yet little is known about the nature of these economic interactions. This study examines the effect of commonly occurring contextual factors on tax professionals’ billing decisions for tax research. These contextual factors are unrelated to the tax research itself and the time it takes to conduct the tax research, but we find that billing decisions are strongly influenced by the three non‐time‐related contextual factors that we manipulate. Initial client volume impacts amounts billed for tax research, with lower initial client volume resulting in higher per client fees. Further, we find that initial billing decisions serve as value billing benchmarks for unanticipated subsequent clients who benefit from research conducted for initial clients. As a result, subsequent clients are billed higher fees when they follow a smaller number of initial clients. We also find that client referrals are billed higher fees than nonclient referrals because professionals attempt to avoid making initial clients feel as though they have been treated unfairly relative to subsequent clients who would otherwise be billed lower fees. The results of this study are relevant beyond the traditional confines of accounting research—they are relevant to the millions of tax entities that contract with tax professionals each year.

Abstract We develop a theoretical framework to study the effects of expensing versus capitalization of investment expenditures on capital market asset prices, corporate investment, and investment efficiency. We use a two‐period model in which the financial reports at the end of the first period influence the price of the firm. In the first period, the current owner makes an investment decision that yields returns during the first and the second periods. We highlight the benefits and costs of the matching principle in GAAP and identify conditions under which less disclosure improves investment efficiency. We find that, in terms of investment efficiency, expensing beats capitalization if and only if the expected growth rate is high, the growth volatility is large, or the earnings persistence is small. We also offer testable empirical implications for accounting choice and for real earnings management.

ABSTRACT Many organizations offer profit sharing plans to motivate increased effort and goal congruence. However, an unintended consequence of such plans may be to reduce honesty in managerial reporting. We investigate two commonly observed profit sharing plans (individual and pooled) in a laboratory experiment where multiple agents with private cost information submit budget requests to an employer. Consistent with our prediction based on crowding theory, our findings suggest that honesty is reduced in the presence of an individual profit sharing plan. However, when a pooled profit sharing plan is used, the adverse effects on honesty are partially mitigated. Our results suggest that an unintended consequence of profit sharing (decreased honesty) can be mitigated through interdependency from pooled plans. The results have practical implications, given that organizations have flexibility in establishing both the size and scope of their profit sharing plans. Our study also contributes to our understanding of reporting behavior, particularly in multi‐agent settings.

ABSTRACT The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board is concerned about auditors' tendency to ignore relevant information that is inconsistent with management's assumptions underlying complex estimates. We find that priming auditors to consider how management arrived at a particular assumption helps curb aggressive reporting by encouraging auditors to engage in low‐level, concrete thinking regarding the direct evidence underlying the assumption. Low‐level, concrete thinking enhances auditors' sensitivity to relevant contradictory evidence. We also find that auditors reviewing graphical (versus textual) evidence are more skeptical of aggressive assumptions underlying a complex estimate. Evidence suggests that this is because graphs provide a better cognitive fit for tasks requiring comparisons and associations among data points. Our study is important to practitioners, regulators, and researchers as it sheds light on how a simple prime and the presentation format of audit evidence influence auditors' professional skepticism in this area. Additionally, it supports audit firms' initiatives to transform data to more visual formats by highlighting a context in which graphs improve auditors' judgments. Finally, we provide evidence as to how different primes affect auditors' evaluation of evidence, which can be useful in designing more effective audit plans.

ABSTRACT We investigate a transfer pricing problem between two divisions within a decentralized firm. An upstream division produces an intermediate good that is used by another division within the firm and is also sold in an external market, where the firm competes with a rival selling a differentiated substitute product. Assuming that headquarters has imperfect information about the upstream division's private information and that communication is restricted, we identify conditions under which the firm will prefer a market‐based transfer price based on the market price set by the firm's rival rather than on the market price set by the upstream division. The two transfer prices affect the price‐setting incentives of the upstream division and its rival differently, and convey different levels of private‐cost information to the downstream division, which impacts internal trade efficiency. The relative performance of the two transfer pricing regimes depends on the relative size of internal versus external demand for the upstream division's good and on the degree of uncertainty about the upstream division's costs. Overall, our analysis provides new insights about how alternative market‐based transfer prices can coordinate decentralized decision‐making in the absence of a perfectly competitive intermediate market.

Abstract We examine whether international equity mutual fund managers shift their portfolios toward stocks with higher financial reporting quality (FRQ) during periods of high political uncertainty. Our study is motivated by two primary factors. First, prior research shows evidence of fund managers’ “flight to quality” (e.g., to less risky securities) during periods of uncertainty. Second, recent theoretical research concludes that stocks with higher FRQ are assessed as less sensitive to systematic risk (such as political uncertainty). We employ national elections as exogenous increases in systematic risk in the local markets and accordingly use an international sample of mutual funds that focus on local markets. We find that mutual fund managers shift their equity holdings to stocks with higher FRQ during election periods when political uncertainty is higher. Such a flight‐to‐quality effect is less pronounced for elections with larger expected electoral margins in the pre‐election period (i.e., when the incumbent is more likely to win the election) and for countries with higher transactions costs. In contrast, the effect is more pronounced when governments have greater involvement in the local economy. Our inferences are robust to alternative proxies for political uncertainty and FRQ and to numerous other sensitivity analyses.

Abstract This study examines whether acquirers make better acquisition decisions when target firms’ financial statements exhibit greater comparability with industry peer firms. We predict and find that acquirers make more profitable acquisition decisions when target firms’ financial statements are more comparable—as evidenced by higher merger announcement returns, higher acquisition synergies, and better future operating performance. We also find that post‐acquisition goodwill impairments and post‐acquisition divestitures are less likely when target firms’ financial statements are more comparable. Finally, we find that acquirers benefit most from comparability when acquirers’ ex ante information asymmetry is higher, acquirers operate in volatile operating environments, and management knows relatively less about the target. In total, our evidence suggests targets’ financial statement comparability helps acquirers make better acquisition‐investment decisions and fosters more efficient capital allocation.

ABSTRACT This paper hypothesizes and finds that firms audited by city‐industry specialists have more timely disclosures of contingent losses from litigation when there is no news coverage relating to the legal case prior to management disclosures. A closer examination reveals that this result is explained by the specialist auditors’ prior experience auditing clients in the same office and industry who are involved with litigation. In our setting, disclosures of litigation‐related contingent losses, we identify two kinds of knowledge generated from experience: industry knowledge and litigation knowledge. Industry knowledge helps auditors detect and correct poor implementation of guidance for litigation loss contingency disclosures. Auditors gain litigation knowledge from auditing clients in a given office and industry with previous involvement as defendants. Thus, the two types of knowledge interact in their effects on reporting outcomes.

Abstract We model relative performance evaluation ( RPE ) when a Chief Executive Officer ( CEO ) has the power to opportunistically influence the design of RPE by choosing the weight on an index‐based peer group or by customizing the selection of peers comprising a peer group. A powerful CEO compares the benefits of reducing common risk affecting his compensation with the benefits of receiving a higher bonus by economizing on expected peer‐group performance. As a consequence, the Board of Directors (BoD) is less likely to use RPE . Our analytical model yields hypotheses predicting that powerful CEO s choose to reduce common risk only partially and that BoDs choose to not implement RPE if expected peer performance is sufficiently high. Our model has further empirical implications in (i) providing new interpretations of tests for detecting strong‐form and weak‐form RPE in the presence of powerful CEO s, and (ii) suggesting a new empirical measure of CEO power with a focus on the delegation of RPE decision rights.