Knowledge that Transforms

To investigate the impact of bank privatization in transition countries, we take the largest banks in six relatively advanced countries, namely, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Hungary, Poland and Romania. Income and balance sheet characteristics and efficiency measures computed from stochastic frontiers are compared across four bank ownership types. Our empirical results support the hypotheses that foreign-owned banks are most efficient and government-owned banks are least efficient. In addition, the importance of attracting a strategic foreign owner in the privatization process is confirmed. However, counter to the conjecture that foreign banks cherry pick the most profitable opportunities, we find that domestic banks have a local advantage in pursuing fee-for-service business. Finally, we show that both the method and the timing of privatization matter to performance; specifically, voucher privatization does not lead to increased efficiency and early-privatized banks are more efficient than later-privatized banks, even though we find no evidence of a selection effect.

Securities litigation poses large costs to firms. The risk of litigation is heightened when firms have unexpectedly large earnings disappointments. Previous literature presents mixed evidence on whether voluntary disclosure of the bad news prior to scheduled earnings announcements deters or triggers litigation. We show that the counterintuitive finding in prior literature that disclosure triggers litigation could be driven by the endogeneity between disclosure and litigation. Using a simultaneous equations methodology, we find no evidence that disclosure triggers litigation. In fact, consistent with economic arguments, our evidence suggests that disclosure potentially deters certain types of litigation.

Executives are ‘affiliated’ if they previously worked for their companies’ audit firms. I find most affiliations (71.3%) occur when auditors become employees of audit clients (‘employment affiliations’), but affiliations also arise when companies hire executives’ former CPA firms (‘alma mater affiliations’). Affiliated companies are significantly more likely than unaffiliated companies to receive clean audit opinions—this finding holds for both employment and alma mater affiliations. Executive turnover is significantly lower for affiliated executives than for unaffiliated executives following the issuance of clean audit opinions—this suggests companies perceive affiliations are more valuable after they receive clean audit opinions.

Analysts with above-median risk-adjusted performance in the estimation period persistently outperform those with below-median performance in the subsequent holdout period. The annualized risk-adjusted returns of trading strategies based on performance persistence are statistically and economically significant, with a magnitude around 10% even after adjusting for transaction costs and trading delays. This stems mostly from past above-median performers and is not simply a decomposition of previously documented post-event return drift. The results support the hypotheses that more information is contained in above-median performers’ recommendations and that investor reaction to these recommendations is incomplete during the event periods.

I examine how revenue recognition timing affects attributes of reported revenue, using a sample of software firms that adopted Statement of Position 91-1 in the early 1990s. I find early recognition yields more timely revenue information, as evidenced by higher contemporaneous correlation with information impounded in stock returns. However, such early recognition diminishes the extent to which accounts receivable accruals map into future cash flow realizations and lowers the time-series predictability of reported revenue. Overall, the results suggest early revenue recognition makes reported revenue more timely and more relevant, but at the cost of lower reliability and lower time-series predictability.

We investigate the relation of the board of directors and institutional ownership with the properties of management earnings forecasts. We find that firms with more outside directors and greater institutional ownership are more likely to issue a forecast and are inclined to forecast more frequently. In addition, these forecasts tend to be more specific, accurate and less optimistically biased. These results are robust to changes specification, Granger causality tests, and simultaneous equation analyses. The results are similar in the pre– and post–Regulation Fair Disclosure (Reg FD) eras. Additional analysis suggests that concentrated institutional ownership is negatively associated with forecast properties. This association is less negative in the post–Reg FD environment, which is consistent with Reg FD reducing the ability of firms to privately communicate information to select audiences.

We investigate the use of a warrant‐pricing approach to incorporate employee stock options (ESOs) into equity valuation and to account for the dilutive effect of ESOs in the valuation of option grants for financial reporting purposes. Our valuation approach accounts for the jointly determined nature of ESO and shareholder values. The empirical results show that our stock price estimate exhibits lower prediction errors and higher explanatory powers for actual share price than does the traditional stock price estimate. We use our valuation approach to assess the implications of dilution on the fair‐value estimates of ESO grants. We find that the fair value is overstated by 6% if we ignore the dilutive feature of ESOs. Furthermore, this bias is larger for firms that are heavy users of ESOs, small, and R&D intensive, and for firms that have a broad‐based ESO compensation plan.

I use a sample of 409 companies that restated their earnings from 1997 to 2001 to examine penalties for outside directors, particularly audit committee members, when their companies experience accounting restatements. Penalties from lawsuits and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) actions are limited. However, directors experience significant labor market penalties. In the three years after the restatement, director turnover is 48% for firms that restate earnings downward, 33% for a performance‐matched sample, 28% for firms that restate upward, and only 18% for technical restatement firms. For firms that overstate earnings, the likelihood of director departure increases in restatement severity, particularly for audit committee directors. In addition, directors of these firms are no longer present in 25% of their positions on other boards. This loss is greater for audit committee members and for more severe restatements. A matched‐sample analysis confirms this result. Overall, the evidence is consistent with outside directors, especially audit committee members, bearing reputational costs for financial reporting failure.

We study how corporate boards and audit committees are associated with voluntary financial disclosure practices, proxied here by management earnings forecasts. We find that in firms with more effective board and audit committee structures, managers are more likely to make or update an earnings forecast, and their forecast is less likely to be precise, it is more accurate, and it elicits a more favorable market response. Together, our empirical evidence is broadly consistent with the notion that effective corporate governance is associated with higher financial disclosure quality.

In emerging markets, the agency conflicts between controlling owners and the minority shareholders are difficult to mitigate through conventional corporate control mechanisms such as boards of directors and takeovers. We examine whether external independent auditors are employed as monitors or as bonding mechanisms, or both, to alleviate the agency problems. Using a broad sample from eight East Asian economies, we document that firms with agency problems embedded in the ownership structures are more likely to employ Big 5 auditors. This relation is evident among firms that raise equity capital frequently. Consistently, firms hiring Big 5 auditors receive smaller share price discounts associated with the agency conflicts. Also, we find that Big 5 auditors take into consideration their clients' agency problems when making audit fee and audit report decisions. Taken together, these results suggest that Big 5 auditors do have a corporate governance role in emerging markets.