{"title":"Any Justification for Creative Accounting: Where Are Fraud, Examiners?","authors":"G. Oyedokun","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.3272415","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.3272415","url":null,"abstract":"The slippery slope is described as ‘playing the system’, ‘beating the system’, and fundamentally neglecting the laid down rules, regulation within the system for selfish reasons. This presentation revealed the justification, ethical or otherwise for creative accounting, aggressive earnings management and related concepts as it affects the professional judgement of fraud examiners. The role of fraud examiners is put to light in ensuring that the users of financial statements are not continued to be put in the dark with respect to the state of the concerned company. This presentation also explores both positive and negative side of Creative accounting and revealed the consequences of the same within the context of fraud examination and financial reporting structures. It is concluded that The use of aggressive accounting techniques may not necessarily be fraudulent. However, it may be the start of a slippery slope, where legitimate earnings management descends into earnings manipulation or fraudulent accounting. This presentation recommends that fraud examiners should take seriously the ACFE code of ethics in resolving the allegation of fraudulent activities as may also concern creative accounting by seeing the bigger picture.","PeriodicalId":274826,"journal":{"name":"Canadian Academic Accounting Association (CAAA)","volume":"78 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-10-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124542353","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Market Reactions to Stock Rating and Target Price Changes in Analyst Reports: Evidence from Japan","authors":"Shohei Ishigami, F. Takeda","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2864128","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2864128","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract We aim to perform a comprehensive analysis of the effects of stock ratings and target prices published in the Japanese markets using a large number of analyst reports. Our study is the first to cover reports published by six domestic brokerage firms and ten foreign brokerage firms. In addition to the impact of rating changes on stock prices, we provide analyses on the combined effects of stock ratings and target prices. Furthermore, we find that market responses are affected by the information quality of securities companies issuing analyst reports and the number of reports issued on the same day.","PeriodicalId":274826,"journal":{"name":"Canadian Academic Accounting Association (CAAA)","volume":"48 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-07-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121544149","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Fair-Value Accounting Framework and the Evolution of the Ohlson Model","authors":"Mohamed Zaher Bouaziz, S. Deschênes, M. Rojas","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3104107","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3104107","url":null,"abstract":"Our study examines the Ohlson Model, which links a company's market value to its equity and net earnings, in the context of the evolution of the accounting model, characterized in particular by a more extensive application of fair value and a broader measure of performance. Our hypothesis is that if equity is reported at its fair value, this measurement is closely linked to market capitalization, insofar as the weight of earnings weakens or even disappears in the Ohlson Model. Drawing on Canada's adoption of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), our results confirm our hypothesis that equity seems to include the information which is pertinent to investors, while earnings had lost some importance. However, the latter still remain important to explain market value of firms.","PeriodicalId":274826,"journal":{"name":"Canadian Academic Accounting Association (CAAA)","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-01-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130513283","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Effect of Customer Concentration on CEO Risk-Taking Incentives","authors":"Jong Won Han","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3021711","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3021711","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines the effect of customer base concentration (“CC”), which captures the extent to which sales to major customers account for a supplier’s total annual revenue, on the supplying firm’s CEO risk-taking equity incentives. Existing literature predominantly uses total annual revenue as a proxy for firm size or managerial decision difficulty without examining from whom the revenue is earned. My paper improves this design by decomposing total annual revenue into revenue from major customers and revenue from the rest based on the CC concept posited by Patatoukas (2012). As prior literature shows CC risk to be idiosyncratic (Dhaliwal et al., 2013) and modern risk-based asset pricing theories posit that idiosyncratic return volatility is not priced amongst the risk-neutral investors, CC risk is diversifiable at the shareholder level – hence, only the performance-related net-benefits (Patatoukas, 2012) of engaging in contractual relationships with a few major customers should determine the desirability of high CC for the risk-neutral investors. However, in the midst of deficient accommodation, a risk-averse, undiversified manager may exhibit risk-aversion towards the state of high CC. Thus, I expect the BOD to recognize this potential agency problem and provide more risk-taking incentives for a CEO who manages a highly concentrated customer base. Upon empirical investigation, I document that CC exerts a positive influence over the supplier’s CEO vega incentives, whereby the CEO is compensated for assuming additional CC risk as her equity wealth becomes an increasing function of the firm’s stock return volatility. Furthermore, I show that less risk-taking incentives are expected when the degree of product substitution difficulty is high or the supplier’s trade credit levels are low, illustrating that the predictability of CC over CEO equity incentives varies with the settings in which the suppliers and customers interact.","PeriodicalId":274826,"journal":{"name":"Canadian Academic Accounting Association (CAAA)","volume":"48 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-12-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116733830","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Financial reporting consequences of sovereign wealth fund investment","authors":"David Godsell","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3101839","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3101839","url":null,"abstract":"Sovereign wealth funds (SWFs), with $8 trillion in assets, are government-owned institutional investors pursuing political and financial investment objectives. I document evidence supporting the hypothesis that simultaneous pursuit of political and financial investment objectives renders SWFs weak monitors. Using a staggered difference-in-differences research design, I find that discretionary accruals increase by 0.31 percent of total assets for SWF target firms after SWF investment relative to an entropy-balanced control group of non-SWF target firms. Corroborating tests document that the effect of SWF investment on discretionary accruals strengthens with SWFs’ equity stake and SWF target firms’ earnings management incentives and weakens when regulators curb SWFs’ pursuit of political objectives. Reanalyses documenting that conventional institutional investment instead reduces discretionary accruals corroborate SWFs’ distinct monitoring effect. Robustness tests employing alternate specifications, samples, and financial reporting proxies further corroborate inferences regarding SWFs’ distinct monitoring role among institutional investors.","PeriodicalId":274826,"journal":{"name":"Canadian Academic Accounting Association (CAAA)","volume":"292 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133778701","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Loan Sales and Borrowers' Accounting Conservatism","authors":"Saiying Deng, Yutao Li, Gerald J. Lobo, Pei Shao","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2373820","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2373820","url":null,"abstract":"We examine whether initial loan sales in the secondary loan market relate to borrowing firms’ accounting conservatism. We find that borrowing firms exhibit a significant decline in accounting conservatism after the initial loan sales. We show that the decline in borrower conservatism is more pronounced for firms borrowing from lenders with lower monitoring incentive and for firms with lower incentive to supply conservatism. The baseline results are robust to a battery of sensitivity tests. Collectively, we provide corroborative evidence that lead lenders’ monitoring incentive is a mechanism through which accounting conservatism is enforced in the private debt market, and that lead lenders play a more prominent role than secondary loan market participants in shaping corporate (conservative) reporting.","PeriodicalId":274826,"journal":{"name":"Canadian Academic Accounting Association (CAAA)","volume":"62 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-02-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131933954","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Waiting for Guidance: Disclosure Noise, Verification Delay, and the Value-Relevance of Good-News versus Bad-News Management Earnings Forecasts","authors":"L. Cohen, A. Marcus, Z. Rezaee, H. Tehranian","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2663704","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2663704","url":null,"abstract":"The market views bad-news management earnings forecasts as more credible than good-news forecasts not because good-news forecasts are biased, but rather because they are noisier than bad-news forecasts. After controlling for noise, the difference in market response disappears. Bad-news forecasts have unconditionally lower dispersion around final earnings and, unlike good-news forecasts, bad-news forecasts become more accurate and contain higher magnitude updates as earnings announcement dates approach. The results provide new direct evidence that management differentially seeks to verify bad news, and withholds greater amounts of bad news while it seeks verification. Consistent with rational markets, this mitigation of noise provides a novel explanation for the asymmetric market response to management earnings forecasts.","PeriodicalId":274826,"journal":{"name":"Canadian Academic Accounting Association (CAAA)","volume":"114 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124181276","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
G. Entwistle, Hamilton Elkins, G. Vaidyanathan, I. Bastiaansen
{"title":"Exploring Capital Structure: Variations in IAS 1 Disclosures of Firm Capital","authors":"G. Entwistle, Hamilton Elkins, G. Vaidyanathan, I. Bastiaansen","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.2713927","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.2713927","url":null,"abstract":"This study examined how a set of Canadian and German firms chose to follow the IAS 1 disclosure guidance on firm capital. Significant variation was found, both within and between Canadian and German firms, in both the propensity to disclose a capital structure and in the form of the disclosure. This variation existed across firms with the same Big4 auditor or where the firms operated in the same industry. Variation was also found regarding which statement of financial position items were included in the firms’ capital structure. While in both countries the capital structure ratios were presented using book values, when these ratios were recalculated using market values, as is common in applied finance, the ratios changed appreciably. Overall, the findings revealed a significant lack of comparability in capital structure disclosures across IFRS-compliant financial statements which should be of concern to international accounting standard setters. The significant variation in capital structure constructions, as well as the use of book values in their measurement, also suggests caution for financial statement users when assessing and comparing firm’s leverage ratios.","PeriodicalId":274826,"journal":{"name":"Canadian Academic Accounting Association (CAAA)","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-01-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115333016","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Should Intangible Investments Be Reported Separately or Commingled with Operating Expenses? New Evidence","authors":"L. Enache, Anup Srivastava","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2715722","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2715722","url":null,"abstract":"We propose a new method to estimate intangible investment outlays, other than expenditures on advertising and research and development, that are reported on a commingled basis with operating expenses in the selling, general, and administrative (SG&A) category of expenses. These outlays, aimed at improving organizational knowledge and capabilities, are the largest category of intangible investments and the fastest-growing category of operating investments. They affect future firm performance and risk. Predictability of future earnings and stock returns improves when these outlays are distinguished from operating expenses. Thus, benefits could accrue from reporting them separately.","PeriodicalId":274826,"journal":{"name":"Canadian Academic Accounting Association (CAAA)","volume":"189 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-01-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133230505","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Activity Based Costing in Intercollegiate Athletic Departments: Is There Value in Using It?","authors":"Jimmy Smith, I. Burt, M. Gentile","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.2897575","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.2897575","url":null,"abstract":"The unstable financial landscape of intercollegiate athletics is an issue that many institutions struggle with on a yearly basis. Most research in this area has focused on financial inequalities (Lawrence, 2013; Zimbalist, 2013). Specifically, Lawrence (2010) has proposed a solution that the NCAA and its members consider adopting the Activity-Based Costing (ABC) management tool to manage the financial information accumulated by athletic departments, which they believe would help make costs more transparent. Athletic administrators of NCAA institutions are unclear about the broad financial inequities issues in intercollegiate athletics and the athletic accounting practices of their institutions. Given that Lawrence, Gabriel and Tuttle (2010) and Lawrence (2013) offer a solution to the problem by implementing ABC, it is unknown what athletic administrators think about this possibility. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to ask NCAA athletic administrators their perspectives on NCAA accounting practices. Specifically whether or not their athletic department uses ABC to help them understanding their costs and then to determine why or why they do not use ABC. Our results demonstrate that most athletic departments do not use ABC and the main reason they do not is that they don’t need the detailed information that ABC would provide. This paper helps to us get a better understanding of what athletic departments are doing to understand their costs and it helps to refute prior research claims that ABC would be useful for athletic departments.","PeriodicalId":274826,"journal":{"name":"Canadian Academic Accounting Association (CAAA)","volume":"93 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-01-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123066307","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}