{"title":"Translating, resisting, or escalating government programs? Accounting at the intersection of centrally imposed programs and local responses","authors":"Ileana Steccolini, Carmela Barbera","doi":"10.1111/1911-3846.13033","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1911-3846.13033","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article examines the role of accounting in the recursive processes of continuous adjustment to programs that emerge when programs are imposed by central government on local government. Focusing on the Italian context and adopting the conceptual lens of governmentality, our study contributes to the extant literature by highlighting the role of accounting in the power dynamics and transactional realities at the intersection between the governors and the governed. In doing so, it considers how accounting can shape plural local government conducts and counter-conducts and how this, in turn, affects programs imposed centrally. It also sheds light on the transactional realities inherent in multiple, layered forms of central disciplining power and how this plays out to recursively redefine central discipline and local autonomy. The study highlights the importance of considering the different ways in which power is enacted and resisted through accounting in governmentality studies. By taking a pluralist and dynamic view of the ways in which programs are implemented, the study reveals multiple local translations and outcomes, as well as the underlying power dynamics at play.</p>","PeriodicalId":10595,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Accounting Research","volume":"42 3","pages":"1589-1619"},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2025-04-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1911-3846.13033","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145013122","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jordan Samet, Karl Schuhmacher, Kristy L. Towry, Jacob Zureich
{"title":"Reciprocity over time: Do employees respond more to kind or unkind controls?","authors":"Jordan Samet, Karl Schuhmacher, Kristy L. Towry, Jacob Zureich","doi":"10.1111/1911-3846.13023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1911-3846.13023","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Reciprocity plays a critical role in the way employees respond to managerial control decisions. The current consensus is that employees punish managers for implementing unkind controls (negative reciprocity) more than they reward managers for implementing kind controls (positive reciprocity). We challenge this consensus. Prior research focuses on settings that emphasize employees' immediate reciprocal responses. However, in the workplace, employees often respond over long periods of time to sticky control decisions (e.g., budgets, pay, decision rights). Focusing on these long-term settings, we predict and find that, while negative reciprocity is initially stronger than positive reciprocity, it also fades more over time than positive reciprocity. This differential fading is so pronounced in our setting that positive reciprocity is stronger overall in the long run. Thus, in long-term settings, positive responses to kind controls may play a more important role than negative responses to unkind controls. Our results inform managerial decisions about the use of kind versus unkind controls and suggest potential long-term benefits of pay disparity and other policies that treat employees differentially.</p>","PeriodicalId":10595,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Accounting Research","volume":"42 2","pages":"1490-1520"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-04-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144206545","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Using internet search data to predict aggregate retail sales and enhance firm-level revenue expectations","authors":"Gary Lind, K. Ramesh","doi":"10.1111/1911-3846.13043","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1911-3846.13043","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This study examines whether a simple measure of internet search intensity for publicly traded retail firms can enhance the capital market's firm-level revenue expectations and provide insights into economy-wide retail sales. At the firm level, the search index is predictive of analyst nowcast and forecast errors after controlling for past sales, deferred revenue, firm characteristics, and firm and time fixed effects. An implementable trading strategy generates abnormal returns of roughly 2% to 3% from the fiscal quarter end through the earnings announcement, well above transaction costs. We also find that approximately two-thirds of the abnormal returns occur around earnings announcements, with an even greater fraction for firms with coarser information environments. At the macro level, we find that the permanent, seasonal, and transitory components of our search intensity index align with those of the Census Bureau's retail sales data and US real gross domestic product, suggesting our measure is a leading indicator of personal consumption expenditures, a key driver of aggregate output. The aggregated search index nowcasts aggregated publicly traded retail firm sales both within and out-of-sample after controlling for past sales.</p>","PeriodicalId":10595,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Accounting Research","volume":"42 3","pages":"1557-1588"},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2025-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145013193","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Inder K. Khurana, K. K. Raman, Byongwook (Brian) Yun
{"title":"PCAOB international inspections and US companies' exports","authors":"Inder K. Khurana, K. K. Raman, Byongwook (Brian) Yun","doi":"10.1111/1911-3846.13041","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1911-3846.13041","url":null,"abstract":"<p>We examine the implications of the PCAOB international inspection program for US companies' exports. Our difference-in-differences analyses suggest that, following the release of the initial PCAOB inspection report in a country abroad, (1) US companies' exports to that country increased, and (2) US companies' major customers in that country reported higher accounts payable. Probing further, the effect on US exports is stronger for companies requiring more relationship-specific investments and for foreign countries with less transparency, weak auditor oversight, and low social trust. Our findings suggest that the release of the initial PCAOB inspection report in a country abroad serves as a public signal of oversight that increases trust in financial reporting integrity abroad, thereby facilitating growth in trade credit and an increase in US exports to companies in that country. Our findings suggest that stakeholders other than investors benefit from PCAOB international inspection reports and highlight a novel externality of the PCAOB international inspection regime benefiting US companies.</p>","PeriodicalId":10595,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Accounting Research","volume":"42 2","pages":"1455-1489"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144207055","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jessica R. Filosa, Jingjing (Jing) Huang, Lijun (Gillian) Lei, Sarah E. Stein
{"title":"Does tax enforcement inform auditors' risk assessment? Evidence from key audit matters","authors":"Jessica R. Filosa, Jingjing (Jing) Huang, Lijun (Gillian) Lei, Sarah E. Stein","doi":"10.1111/1911-3846.13042","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1911-3846.13042","url":null,"abstract":"<p>International standards encourage auditors to consider regulatory factors and external parties during the risk assessment process. One such external party is the taxation authority, which monitors corporate conduct and uses the threat of tax audits to constrain managerial opportunism. This study examines whether tax enforcement influences auditors' perception of the risk of material misstatement on their engagements. Using a sample of companies listed on European exchanges, we assess the strength of tax enforcement at the country level based on the number of full-time equivalent (FTE) employees in the tax audit and verification function relative to the size of the economy. Since auditors of these European listed companies must publicly disclose key audit matters (KAMs), we use the number of KAMs to capture auditors' perceptions of client-level misstatement risk. Our results indicate that auditors report fewer KAMs in the presence of more FTEs in the tax audit and verification function. In cross-sectional tests, we find that this negative association is stronger in settings where auditors are more inclined to incorporate the monitoring potential of the tax authority into their risk assessment, such as in countries with high book-tax conformity and for auditors with greater exposure to complex tax issues. These findings offer new insights into the role of tax enforcement in auditors' decision-making and have timely implications for accounting regulators and academics studying the determinants of KAMs.</p>","PeriodicalId":10595,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Accounting Research","volume":"42 2","pages":"1423-1454"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-04-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144206716","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Brian Akins, Jonathan Bitting, David De Angelis, Maclean Gaulin
{"title":"CEO short-term incentives and the agency cost of debt","authors":"Brian Akins, Jonathan Bitting, David De Angelis, Maclean Gaulin","doi":"10.1111/1911-3846.13021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1911-3846.13021","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper shows that creditors' horizon interests impact the design of CEO compensation contracts. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find that borrowing firms provide shorter incentives to their CEO following a loan covenant violation. They do so by decreasing the horizon of pay and tilting the choice of performance metrics toward accounting goals, in particular short-term ones. This effect is stronger when creditors' interests are more immediate, such as among loans with short remaining maturity and when borrowers have lower cash reserves. This effect is weaker when the cost to shareholders is higher, such as among firms with high growth opportunities. Together these results are consistent with boards intending to facilitate renegotiation and mitigate repayment risk while balancing shareholder interests. Overall, our evidence supports a novel reason for the use of short-term incentives, namely to reduce the agency cost of debt.</p>","PeriodicalId":10595,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Accounting Research","volume":"42 2","pages":"1388-1422"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-04-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144206865","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Investor reactions to climate change disclosures: Joint effects of disclosure focus and controllability","authors":"Soon-Yeow Phang, Prabashi Dharmasiri, Dani Puspitasari","doi":"10.1111/1911-3846.13037","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1911-3846.13037","url":null,"abstract":"<p>When evaluating the potential financial effects of climate change, investors demand disclosures of the climate-related risks and opportunities that companies need to manage. We examine how and why management control over climate change performance affects investors' evaluations of such disclosures. In a series of experiments, we find that investors believe that managerial optimism is beneficial and, thus, are more willing to invest when climate-related disclosures focus on opportunities rather than risks. This effect, however, occurs only when management has high control over the company's future climate change performance. When that control is low, investors believe that managerial realism is beneficial and, thus, are more willing to invest when these disclosures focus on risks rather than opportunities. Our study has implications for companies and standard setters considering the consequences of focusing on either risks or opportunities in climate change reporting and the conditions under which one focus or the other may be beneficial.</p>","PeriodicalId":10595,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Accounting Research","volume":"42 2","pages":"1359-1387"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-04-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1911-3846.13037","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144206694","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Can investors learn from patent documents? Evidence from textual analysis","authors":"Yuxiang Zheng","doi":"10.1111/1911-3846.13036","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1911-3846.13036","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper examines the role of patent texts in the stock market valuation of patents. Utilizing the large language model BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) to summarize contextual information within patent texts, I find that patent texts explain 31.5% of the variation in the stock market valuation of patents and provide large incremental explanatory power beyond other structured patent characteristics, firm characteristics, and technological trends. Additionally, patent texts significantly predict the level, volatility, and cumulation speed of future earnings, suggesting they contain genuine information about firms' performance. However, investors do not fully incorporate such information within patent texts into stock prices, as evidenced by the predictive power of patent texts for future stock returns. This underreaction is diminished after the pre-grant publication of patent applications is mandated. My findings underscore the value of patent texts as a source of information on internally developed intangibles and have implications for academics, practitioners, and regulators.</p>","PeriodicalId":10595,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Accounting Research","volume":"42 2","pages":"1331-1358"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1911-3846.13036","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144206728","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Navigating global uncertainty: Do foreign national directors protect US firms from supply chain disruptions?","authors":"Rohan D'Lima, Ariel Rava, Musa Subasi","doi":"10.1111/1911-3846.13040","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1911-3846.13040","url":null,"abstract":"<p>We examine whether foreign national directors (FNDs) on US corporate boards help their firms mitigate the adverse effects of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) shocks originating from the directors' home countries. Using a comprehensive data set of US manufacturing firms' international supply chain relationships from 2003 to 2019, we find that EPU spikes in supplier countries lead to significant declines in aggregate US imports as well as in buyer firms' inventory purchases, sales, and market valuation. However, firms with FNDs from the affected countries are better able to mitigate these negative impacts. Cross-sectional analyses reveal that the beneficial role of FNDs is more pronounced in firms with limited operational slack, greater difficulty accessing information about supplier countries, and higher financial constraints. Robust to a battery of sensitivity tests, our findings underscore the importance of FNDs on corporate boards during times of increased global uncertainty, especially for firms heavily reliant on foreign suppliers, and inform the debate on board diversity and supply chain resilience amid economic policy-driven uncertainties.</p>","PeriodicalId":10595,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Accounting Research","volume":"42 2","pages":"1298-1330"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-04-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1911-3846.13040","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144206892","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Gus De Franco, R. Christopher Small, Aida Sijamic Wahid
{"title":"Determinants of and future violations following deferred prosecution and non-prosecution agreements in corporate criminal cases","authors":"Gus De Franco, R. Christopher Small, Aida Sijamic Wahid","doi":"10.1111/1911-3846.13039","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1911-3846.13039","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The US Department of Justice's increasing use of deferred prosecution and non-prosecution agreements (D/NPAs) over the past two decades has sparked debate about their merits compared with traditional plea deals, which often result in criminal convictions. This study examines the factors influencing prosecutors' decisions to use D/NPAs in disciplining firms for corporate misconduct. We analyze whether the likelihood of a firm's future misconduct varies by the type of discipline imposed, comparing the effectiveness of D/NPAs to traditional prosecution. Our findings reveal that prosecutors are more likely to employ D/NPAs with firms when a criminal conviction could cause significant economic harm to stakeholders. However, firms subject to D/NPAs are more likely to commit subsequent violations compared with those entering plea deals. As D/NPAs gain traction in the United States and internationally, our research highlights a trade-off: while D/NPAs mitigate harm to innocent stakeholders, they are less effective at deterring future misconduct than traditional prosecutions.</p>","PeriodicalId":10595,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Accounting Research","volume":"42 2","pages":"1271-1297"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1911-3846.13039","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144206719","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}