Knowledge that Transforms

ABSTRACT: We study the effects of cross-listings on audit fees. We first develop a model in which legal environments play a crucial role in determining the auditor's legal liability. Our model and analysis predict that auditors charge higher fees for firms that are cross-listed in countries with stronger legal regimes than they do for non-cross-listed firms and that the cross-listing audit fee premium increases with the difference in the strength of legal regimes between the cross-listed foreign country and the home country. We then empirically test these predictions. The results of our cross-country regressions strongly support our predictions. In addition, we find no significant cross-listing fee premium for firms that are cross-listed in countries whose legal regimes are. no stronger than those of their home countries. This suggests that cross-listing audit fee premiums are associated with increased legal liability and not with increased audit complexity per se. Our findings help explain why cross-listing premiums occur and what determines their magnitude.

ABSTRACT: This study examines the revenue implications of satisfaction measures in a setting with multiple stakeholders. I obtain a proprietary database from a leading health insurance company that measures satisfaction levels of multiple stakeholders, including: (1) clients that purchase insurance plans for their employees, (2) patients who use the insurance plans, and (3) doctors who provide medical services. Using multi-stakeholder satisfaction data over a 20-quarter period, I find that satisfaction measures are multi-dimensional, and that future revenues are positively associated with certain, but not all, dimensions of client, patient, and doctor satisfaction. Drawing on stakeholder theory, I predict that the revenue implications of stakeholder satisfaction vary with the power of different stakeholder groups. Specifically, I examine the moderating effects of the percentage of voluntary patients, business unit age, and market penetration on the relation between stakeholder satisfaction and future revenues, finding evidence consistent with my prediction.

ABSTRACT: We study management forecasts in Japan, where forecasts are effectively mandated but managers have considerable latitude over the numbers they release. We find that managers' initial earnings forecasts for a fiscal year are systematically upward-biased but that they revise their forecasts downward during the fiscal year so that most earnings surprises are non-negative. Managers' initial forecast optimism is inversely related to firm performance, and is more pronounced for firms with higher levels of insider ownership, smaller firms, and firms with a history of forecast optimism. The fact that managers' forecasts tend to be consistently optimistic suggests that reputation effects are insufficient to ensure managerial forecast accuracy. We also find that the information content of managers' forecasts is related to proxies for whether market participants view the forecasts as credible.

ABSTRACT: Using a representative sample of entrepreneurs who are in the process of starting a business, this study investigates the determinants of the preparation of financial statements and projections in start-up ventures. Consistent with predictions from information economics and contracting, I find that the use of outside funding, level of competition, and venture scale are positively associated with the intended frequency of financial statement preparation. However, comparing the economic significance of alternative influences suggests that the benefit of reducing competitive and fundamental uncertainty is more influential in explaining variations in intentions to prepare financial statements. Further, I find the determinants of preparation frequency vary among different financial statements; for instance, cash statements are more important for start-ups with products in earlier stages of development and with greater competition. In contrast to financial statements, the preparation of projections such as formal financial projections and regular sales forecasts by start-ups is positively associated with the importance of intangible investments such as patents, research and development, and with start-ups in high-tech industries.

ABSTRACT: We use experimental markets to examine stock-based compensation's impact on the objectivity of participants serving as audit committee members.We compare audit committee member reporting objectivity under three regimes: no stock-based compensation, stock-based compensation linked to current shareholders, and stock-based compensation linked to future shareholders. Our experiments show that student participants serving as audit committee members prefer biased reporting when compensated with stock-based compensation. Audit committee members compensated with current stock-based compensation prefer aggressive reporting, and audit committee members compensated with future stock-based compensation prefer overly conservative reporting. We find that audit committee members who do not receive stock-based compensation are the most objective. Our study suggests that stock-based compensation impacts audit committee member preferences for biased reporting, suggesting the need for additional research in this area.

ABSTRACT: This study evaluates the impact of earnings on credit risk in the Credit Default Swap (CDS) market using levels, changes, and event study analyses. We find that earnings (cash flows, accruals) of reference firms are negatively and significantly correlated with the level of CDS premia, consistent with earnings (cash flows, accruals) conveying information about default risk. Based on the changes analysis, a 1 percent increase in ROA decreases CDS rates significantly by about 5 percent. We also find that (1) CDS premia are more highly correlated with below-median earnings than with above-median earnings and (2) CDS premia are more highly correlated with earnings of low-rated firms than with earnings of high-rated firms. Evidence indicates further that short-window earnings surprises are negatively and significantly correlated with CDS premia changes in the three-day window surrounding the preliminary earnings announcement, although the impact is concentrated in the shorter maturities.

ABSTRACT: We document systematic evidence of risk effects of disclosures culled from a virtually exhaustive set of sources from the print medium. We content analyze more than 100,000 disclosure reports by management, analysts, and news reporters (i.e., business press) in constructing firm-specific disclosure measures that are quantitative and amenable to replication. We expect credibility and timeliness differences in the disclosures by source, which would translate into differential cost of capital effects. We find that when content analysis indicates favorable disclosures, the firm's risk, as proxied by the cost of capital, stock return volatility, and analyst forecast dispersion, declines significantly. In contrast, unfavorable disclosures are accompanied by significant increases in risk measures. Analysis of disclosures by source—corporations, analysts, and the business press—reveals that negative disclosures from business press sources result in increased cost of capital and return volatility, and favorable reports from business press reduce the cost of capital and return volatility.

We study going-concern (GC) reporting in Belgium to examine the effects associated with a shift toward rules-based audit standards. Beginning in 2000, a major revision in Belgian GC audit standards took effect. Among its changes, auditors must ascertain whether their clients are in compliance with two "financial-juridical criteria'' for board of directors' GC disclosures. In a study of a sample of private Belgian companies, we report two major findings. First, there is a decrease in auditor Type II errors, particularly by non-Big 6/5 auditors for their clients that fail both criteria. Second, there is an increase in Type I errors, again particularly for companies that fail both criteria. We also conduct an ex post analysis of the decrease in Type II errors and the increase in Type I errors. Our findings suggest the standard engenders both favorable and un-favorable effects, the net of which depends on the priorities assigned to the affected parties (creditors, auditors, companies, and employees).

ABSTRACT: We investigate the association between errors in management forecasts of subsequent year earnings and current year accruals. In an uncertain operating environment, managers' assessments of their firms' business prospects are imperfect. Since managers' imperfect business assessments influence both accruals generation and earnings projection, we hypothesize that management earnings forecasts exhibit greater optimism (pessimism) when accruals are relatively high (low). Consistent with this hypothesis, we find a positive association between management earnings forecast errors and accruals. This positive association is stronger for firms operating in a more uncertain business environment and for firms in industries exhibiting greater covariation between accruals and growth-related activities. Moreover, this positive association is significant when accruals likely reflect managers' true beliefs about firms' business prospects, but is nonexistent when accruals are likely manipulated to boost managers' trading gains. Supplementary analysis reveals that the presence of management earnings forecasts does not significantly reduce accrual mispricing.

ABSTRACT: This study uses experimental methods to explore whether incorporating real options into net present value analysis can reduce escalation of commitment, or the tendency of decision makers to continue to commit resources to a project after receiving negative feedback. This reduction in escalation behavior should occur because the incorporation of real options offers the user greater cognitive accessibility to the possibility of project abandonment. Findings indicate that users of real options exhibit less escalation of commitment than do users of net present value analysis alone. The main result demonstrates that the use of real options in capital budgeting can affect the behavior and decisions of the user even in an experimental setting that controls for the informational advantage of using real options.