{"title":"Be good to be wise: Environmental, Social, and Governance awareness as a potential credit risk mitigation factor","authors":"Marina Brogi, Valentina Lagasio, Pasqualina Porretta","doi":"10.1111/jifm.12156","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jifm.12156","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Integrating Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) factors into credit risk assessment is the new frontier for credit risk management as regulators and investors increasingly require banks to channel loans to “sustainable” borrowers and ultimately foster sustainable growth. Our findings show that higher ESG awareness is strongly associated with better creditworthiness (proxied by the Altman <i>Z</i>-score). We apply a two-step methodology to 3331 companies from various industries and geographies in the 2000–2016 period which reveals that high ESG awareness scores are strongly and very significantly associated with a reduction in firm credit risk. We check the robustness by using the Probability of Default as a dependent variable and an instrumental variable constructed with a factor analysis. Our results support the appropriateness of the introduction of ESG awareness parameters in the creditworthiness assessment of borrowers.</p>","PeriodicalId":46659,"journal":{"name":"Journal of International Financial Management & Accounting","volume":"33 3","pages":"522-547"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2022-01-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/jifm.12156","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72156550","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}
Stefano Dell'Atti, Caterina Di Tommaso, Vincenzo Pacelli
{"title":"Sovereign green bond and country value and risk: Evidence from European Union countries","authors":"Stefano Dell'Atti, Caterina Di Tommaso, Vincenzo Pacelli","doi":"10.1111/jifm.12155","DOIUrl":"10.1111/jifm.12155","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The sovereign green bond market has been growing rapidly worldwide since its debut in 2016. The study investigates the empirical response of the stock and credit default swap (CDS) market to green bond issuance by 10 EU countries during the period 2016–2021. We document that the issuance of a green bond is regarded by the investors as reflecting as value-enhancing and risk-reducing behavior by EU countries. The issuance of sovereign green bond provides a strong signal of the country's involvement to a low-carbon economy by increasing the social and reputational benefits. This effect is even more evident during the pandemic crisis. The reaction of stock and CDS market is driven by several factors such as bond and country characteristics. Overall, our findings suggest that the sovereign issuance of green bonds acts as mitigation mechanism for country risk.</p>","PeriodicalId":46659,"journal":{"name":"Journal of International Financial Management & Accounting","volume":"33 3","pages":"505-521"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2022-01-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45620893","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}
Paolo Fiorillo, Antonio Meles, Mario Mustilli, Dario Salerno
{"title":"How does the financial market influence firms' Green innovation? The role of equity analysts","authors":"Paolo Fiorillo, Antonio Meles, Mario Mustilli, Dario Salerno","doi":"10.1111/jifm.12152","DOIUrl":"10.1111/jifm.12152","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper investigates how equity analysts influence firms' green innovation across different financial markets. Using a unique data set consisting of more than 6000 listed firms across 56 different countries, we find that corporate green innovation is positively associated with the number of equity analysts following the firm. We attribute this result to the informational role of analysts, which encourages managers to invest more in eco-innovation. However, when we divide the full sample into two subsamples based on whether covered firms are incorporated in market-oriented or bank-oriented countries, we find that the association between firm's green innovation and analyst coverage becomes negative in the case of market-oriented financial systems. We argue that potential explanations for this result rely on the differences occurring among market-oriented and bank-oriented systems in terms of listed companies' ownership structure and the prevalence of arm's length transaction banking rather than long-term lender–borrower relationships.</p>","PeriodicalId":46659,"journal":{"name":"Journal of International Financial Management & Accounting","volume":"33 3","pages":"428-458"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2022-01-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/jifm.12152","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43243783","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}
Dereck Barr-Pulliam, Helen L. Brown-Liburd, Ivy Munoko
{"title":"The effects of person-specific, task, and environmental factors on digital transformation and innovation in auditing: A review of the literature","authors":"Dereck Barr-Pulliam, Helen L. Brown-Liburd, Ivy Munoko","doi":"10.1111/jifm.12148","DOIUrl":"10.1111/jifm.12148","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This study reviews literature examining digital transformation in the external audit setting. Our review will inform the standard-setting initiatives of the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB) related to the use of technology in auditing. We identified 36 articles on digital transformation in the external audit published between 2000 and 2021 across 20 journals ranked A*, A, B, and C on the Australian Business Deans Council (ABDC) 2021 Journal Quality List. We also identified 18 advanced working papers. These articles cover conceptual frameworks and archival, experimental, interviews, case studies, and survey research methods. Fifty percent of the published articles appear in A* or A journals, of which nine were published in one of the premier six accounting research journals (i.e., A*) since 2020. This trend is a promising sign that there appears to be increasing interest in publishing digital transformation-related research in these general interest journals. We use the Bonner judgment and decision-making framework, coupled with the four primary data analytic tools, to organize and evaluate the literature. This study examines descriptive and diagnostic analytics; more complex techniques, such as predictive and prescriptive, are not as prevalent. Further, existing research insufficiently addresses how data analytic tools impact auditor judgment and decision-making, providing multiple future inquiry lines.</p>","PeriodicalId":46659,"journal":{"name":"Journal of International Financial Management & Accounting","volume":"33 2","pages":"337-374"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2022-01-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43175098","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":"Does nonperforming loan securitization affect credit default swap spreads? Evidence from European banks","authors":"Caterina Di Tommaso, Vincenzo Pacelli","doi":"10.1111/jifm.12147","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jifm.12147","url":null,"abstract":"<p>We contribute to the growing literature on bank risk management by examining the credit risk implications of nonperforming loan (NPL) management during the period 2012–2020. We construct a unique database with 116 NPL deals by 31 European Union (EU) banks. Our study is motivated by the hypothesis that NPL securitization has a beneficial effect on bank loan quality and that this effect is incorporated in the bank's credit default swap (CDS) spread. Our analysis finds a statistically significant decline in a bank's CDS spread in the days leading up to and shortly after the announcement of an NPL securitization. This suggests that the CDS market views NPL securitization as a de-risking activity and a means of risk mitigation. The impact is even more evident for NPL securitization with a government guarantee which may offer additional credibility to these de-risking activities.</p>","PeriodicalId":46659,"journal":{"name":"Journal of International Financial Management & Accounting","volume":"33 2","pages":"285-306"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2022-01-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72148815","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":"An introduction to the special issue on Green Finance and sustainability","authors":"Vincenzo Verdoliva, Samuel A. Vigne","doi":"10.1111/jifm.12149","DOIUrl":"10.1111/jifm.12149","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46659,"journal":{"name":"Journal of International Financial Management & Accounting","volume":"33 3","pages":"379-382"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2022-01-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46061731","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":"Do institutions, religion and the economic cycle impact bank stability in dual banking systems?","authors":"Eralp Bektas, Marei Elbadri, Philip Molyneux","doi":"10.1111/jifm.12146","DOIUrl":"10.1111/jifm.12146","url":null,"abstract":"<p>We investigate the relationship of institutional quality, religion, and economic cycles to bank stability using a sample of 254 banks, including Islamic (IBs) and conventional banks (CBs), located in nine countries (QISMUT+3) that follow dual banking systems. We use a comprehensive model and adopt a stronger econometric methodology compared with previous literature. Our findings reaffirm the significant positive influence of institutional quality on bank stability as proxied by a bank's Z-score. Institutional quality variables including financial freedom, voice and accountability, the rule of law, and political stability positively influence bank stability. On the other hand, other institutional quality variables such as economic freedom, government effectiveness, RQ, and corruption negatively affect bank stability. Overall, our empirical evidence shows that IBs are relatively less stable than CBs, due to banking practices, riskier products, and immature legal frameworks. Our analysis also suggests that IBs operate in a similar manner as CBs. New to this study, results suggest that religious orientation has no significant effect on bank stability in our sample countries with dual banking systems. Importantly, we find that the legal system, in particular the Sharià-based legal system, has no significant effect on stability for IBs. Furthermore, customer religiosity measured as the share of Muslim population does not appear to have a differential impact on stability for IBs compared to CBs except when the Muslim share in population exceeds 85%.</p>","PeriodicalId":46659,"journal":{"name":"Journal of International Financial Management & Accounting","volume":"33 2","pages":"252-284"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2022-01-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44928010","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":"Tax enforcement efforts and stock price crash risk: Evidence from China","authors":"Shihua Chen, Yan Ye, Khalil Jebran","doi":"10.1111/jifm.12145","DOIUrl":"10.1111/jifm.12145","url":null,"abstract":"<p>We propose that firms in regions with strong tax enforcement efforts have low stock price crash risk. Using a large sample of Chinese firms from 2003 to 2017, we find that tax enforcement efforts negatively affect future crash risk. This negative effect is stronger among state-owned companies but weaker when information opacity is higher for firms. These results are robust to alternative measures, additional controls, and additional analyses. We also show that tax avoidance and accounting conservatism are two potential channels through which tax enforcement efforts affect crash risk. The findings contribute to the literature by elaborating that tax enforcement efforts not only alleviate tax-avoiding activities but also can act as a governance mechanism in reducing crash risk in an emerging economy context.</p>","PeriodicalId":46659,"journal":{"name":"Journal of International Financial Management & Accounting","volume":"33 2","pages":"193-218"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2021-12-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49207657","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}
Cătălin N. Albu, Nadia Albu, Allan Hodgson, Zhengling Xiong
{"title":"Governance in Romania: Exploring the determinants of corporate insider trading","authors":"Cătălin N. Albu, Nadia Albu, Allan Hodgson, Zhengling Xiong","doi":"10.1111/jifm.12144","DOIUrl":"10.1111/jifm.12144","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Romania ranks at the extreme low end in Eastern Europe in terms of Hofstede cultural insights, rule of law, government effectiveness, and corruption—potentially limiting governance quality for restricting resource channeling. In this paper, we examine whether these shortcomings flow over into the degree of corporate insider trading profitability at the firm level. Consistent with high power distance, low individualism, and voice and accountability, executives and their family members extract higher returns. The conjectured monitoring constraint of equity ownership had little impact on reducing profitable trading. Second, media reporting of firm-related scandals only restrained insider profitability in firms with government ownership—consistent with general forbearance of corruption and sanction from the use of politically controlled assets. Third, the global financial crisis revealed both a crisis of inept trading consistent with high uncertainty avoidance and also highly profitable trades for a limited set of executives who undertook short-term reversal strategies. Our exploratory microanalysis suggests a prototype to highlight areas requiring governance and investor attention in Eastern European countries.</p>","PeriodicalId":46659,"journal":{"name":"Journal of International Financial Management & Accounting","volume":"33 2","pages":"307-336"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2021-12-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/jifm.12144","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44094124","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":"Real earnings smoothing and crash risk: Evidence from Japan","authors":"Wenjun Kuang","doi":"10.1111/jifm.12143","DOIUrl":"10.1111/jifm.12143","url":null,"abstract":"<p>I focus on the relationship between real earnings smoothing and one-year-ahead firm-specific crash risk in Japan and investigate the effect of financial institutional ownership and the implementation of J-SOX on the above relationship. Specifically, I hypothesize that the garbling real earnings smoothing is positively associated with stock price crash risk, and the informative real earnings smoothing is negatively associated with stock price crash risk. My results show that the crash risk increases as the garbling real earnings smoothing increases due to the managerial concealment of bad news about firms’ prospects. However, there is no significant relationship between the informative real earnings smoothing and crash risk. I further find that the relation between garbling real earnings smoothing and crash risk is constrained by effective external monitoring by stable institutional investors and the implementation of J-SOX. Further evidence indicates that there is a significant and negative relationship between the garbling real earnings smoothing and asymmetric timeliness with respect to bad news. These results suggest that managers undertake the garbling component of real earnings smoothing to withhold the negative private information, resulting in the increase of downside risk of firms’ stock price. Overall, this study investigates the role of real earnings smoothing in the negative information transmission by managers in Japanese firms.</p>","PeriodicalId":46659,"journal":{"name":"Journal of International Financial Management & Accounting","volume":"33 1","pages":"154-187"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2021-11-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/jifm.12143","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43619741","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}