{"title":"Institutional mechanisms, ownership and bank risk-taking during crises","authors":"Thi Thuy Anh Vo , Nathan Lael Joseph","doi":"10.1016/j.bar.2024.101451","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.bar.2024.101451","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Previous studies indicate that prior period investor protection, quality of government/institution and ownership have little to no influence on bank risk-taking around crisis periods. Using contemporaneous data for 40 countries, we show that institutional mechanisms, investor protection, bank regulation and supervision (BRS) rules, and ownership, reduced bank risk-taking around the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and the Eurozone Crisis/Sovereign Debt Crisis periods. Institutional mechanisms have the strongest risk-reducing impacts on bank risk-taking, whereas foreign and government ownership have the weakest impacts. The greater the distance from bank default the lower the likelihood of crisis regimes. Investor protection increased (decreased) the likelihood of the GFC (Eurozone Crisis) regimes. Government ownership increased (decreased) the likelihood of the GFC (Eurozone Crisis) regimes. Using a generalized bivariate copula function, we untangle the relation between crisis regimes and bank risk-taking by showing that higher risk-taking increases the likelihood of crisis regimes.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47996,"journal":{"name":"British Accounting Review","volume":"57 3","pages":"Article 101451"},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2025-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143899983","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}
Grantley Taylor , Douglas Cumming , Donghui Li , Jing Shi
{"title":"The role of legal, regulatory and political reforms and institutions in influencing accounting and financial outcomes","authors":"Grantley Taylor , Douglas Cumming , Donghui Li , Jing Shi","doi":"10.1016/j.bar.2025.101647","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.bar.2025.101647","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The purpose of this editorial is to provide a summary of how legal, regulatory or political changes or innovations impact accounting or financial outcomes. The intersection of legal, regulatory, and political environments with accounting and financial outcomes is a critical area of study in the field of accounting. Legal frameworks, regulatory bodies, and political decisions create the environment in which financial reporting and accounting practices are developed and enforced. This editorial summarises and discusses five papers that have been included in this special section. A review of the outcomes of such reforms or innovations in these papers provides direct evidence of the effectiveness of policy, which can provide useful and relevant input for any further planned innovations.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47996,"journal":{"name":"British Accounting Review","volume":"57 3","pages":"Article 101647"},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2025-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143873104","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":"How does divergence of control and cash-flow rights influence cost stickiness?","authors":"Seungbin Oh , Ahrum Choi","doi":"10.1016/j.bar.2024.101495","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.bar.2024.101495","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study investigates whether the degree of cost stickiness depends on the divergence between control and cash-flow rights of ultimate owners using data from 22 countries. Firms with a large divergence between control and cash-flow rights are known to take more opportunistic actions at the expense of minority shareholders. The empirical results show that the magnitude of cost stickiness decreases as the divergence between control and cash-flow rights increases due to the greater incentives to manipulate earnings. Firms use both accruals earnings management (AEM) and real-activities earnings management (REM), and among REM, they adjust production activity and discretionary expense to affect cost. Additional tests show that the negative relationship between the divergence between control and cash-flow rights and cost stickiness is more pronounced in countries with weak economic, legal, and social factors. This paper, by examining the effect of ownership structure on cost behavior as well as its underlying mechanism, broadens the understanding of sticky cost behavior and contributes to the growing body of literature on the convergence of financial and managerial accounting.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47996,"journal":{"name":"British Accounting Review","volume":"57 3","pages":"Article 101495"},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2025-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142637401","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":"Female lead auditors, audit fees, and audit quality","authors":"Tiphaine Jérôme , Cédric Poretti , Alain Schatt","doi":"10.1016/j.bar.2024.101497","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.bar.2024.101497","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We investigate whether female lead auditors are associated with higher audit fees and audit quality. We expect female lead auditors to have a significant influence on these audit outcomes for two reasons. First, female auditors are more risk averse and less tolerant of opportunistic behaviours than their male counterparts. Second, lead auditors perform more numerous and varied tasks and spend more time on the audit of a given client than concurring auditors. Our results show that female lead auditors are associated with higher audit quality but not with higher audit fees. However, these results only hold for female lead auditors with low client-specific experience (i.e., in a riskier context). Finally, additional analyses suggest that female lead auditors and female concurring auditors have a different influence on audit fees and audit quality.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47996,"journal":{"name":"British Accounting Review","volume":"57 3","pages":"Article 101497"},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2025-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142637402","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":"Should underwriters be trusted? Reducing agency costs through primary market supervision","authors":"Sean Foley , Xiaolu Hu , Haozhi Huang , Jiang Li","doi":"10.1016/j.bar.2024.101510","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.bar.2024.101510","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We examine the mandated introduction of a supervised auction framework within China's primary bond market. This regulatory intervention resulted in a substantial reduction in debt costs for Chinese Bond issuers, primarily attributed to the alleviation of agency conflicts between underwriters and issuers. Leveraging unique bidder-level data obtained from a lead underwriter, our study provides replicable tools to discern collusive bidding behavior. This sheds light on instances of artificially inflated bond yields, highlighting economically burdensome practices. Our findings can assist regulators, issuers, and investors engaged in unsupervised auction mechanisms. Our insights offer potential enhancements to regulatory frameworks and operational efficiency across various sectors, including securities issuance, construction projects, and procurement.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47996,"journal":{"name":"British Accounting Review","volume":"57 3","pages":"Article 101510"},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2025-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143899876","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":"Labor protection and stock price crash risk: Evidence from international equity markets","authors":"Wei Chen , Lili Dai , Xiaohua Fang , Wenjun Zhang","doi":"10.1016/j.bar.2023.101274","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.bar.2023.101274","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We utilize the exogenous intertemporal variation in employment protection across countries and study the impact of employment protection on international equity markets. We find robust evidence that firms located in countries with weak labor protection regulation exhibit a low level of one-year-ahead stock price crash risks relative to those in countries with strong labor protection regulation. It is consistent with the view that when employees face material unemployment risk, they are more incentivized to engage in information search and analysis, thereby curtailing the effectiveness of managerial bad news hoarding activities (i.e., <em>the protection heightening risk hypothesis</em>). Our findings are robust to a battery of sensitivity tests. Further evidence shows that the impact of employment protection on crash risk is more pronounced for firms with a higher proclivity to suppress bad news and for firms in countries with stronger legal enforcement. Our findings have important implications for policymakers concerning equity extreme risk and labor protection around the globe.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47996,"journal":{"name":"British Accounting Review","volume":"57 3","pages":"Article 101274"},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2025-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135615119","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":"Lesson from stock price crash: Changes in managerial confidence and incentives","authors":"Hyeong Joon Kim","doi":"10.1016/j.bar.2024.101499","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.bar.2024.101499","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper investigates the consequences of stock price crashes. I find that stock price crash risk subsequently reduces managerial confidence levels, as proxied by the CEO's option-based and earnings call transcript's text-based measures. I also find that stock price crash risk reduces CEO compensation and equity incentives, suggesting that a firm seeks to adjust managerial incentives after its stock price crashes to prevent future occurrences. Furthermore, CEOs with high confidence are more likely to curtail overinvestment after their crash experiences relative to others, thereby contributing to shareholder value. Overall, this paper provides novel evidence that CEOs and firms appear to learn from their experiences of stock price crashes, suggesting that stock price crashes may induce experience-driven conservatism that influences CEO and corporate decisions.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47996,"journal":{"name":"British Accounting Review","volume":"57 3","pages":"Article 101499"},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2025-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142637399","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}
Douglas Cumming , Yihui Lan , Yuan George Shan , Junru Zhang
{"title":"Discretionary tone in reward-based crowdfunding: Do project owners talk their way to success?","authors":"Douglas Cumming , Yihui Lan , Yuan George Shan , Junru Zhang","doi":"10.1016/j.bar.2024.101433","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.bar.2024.101433","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study examines the relationship between abnormal tone and project performance of reward-based crowdfunding (RBC) using the Kickstarter data from 2009 to 2020. We document a negative relationship between abnormal tone and the success of a project in the RBC campaign section, while a positive impact in the Risks and Challenges section. This outcome remains robust to a variety of sensitivity tests and after accounting for potential endogeneity concerns. Cross-sectional analyses reveal that the effect of abnormal tone in RBC on project success is contingent on project quality and legal jurisdiction. Further investigation of the concurrent effect of abnormal tone in the two sections shows that an increase in the discretionary tone, given that it is overly optimistic, has a negative effect on funding performance. Last, based on a machine learning Sent-Latent Dirichlet Allocation model, we explore up to 70 specific risk categories embedded in Kickstarter projects, and we find that eight of them are strongly and negatively associated with project success. Our paper provides valuable insights into the significance of disclosure and sheds light on the ongoing and increased regulations on crowdfunding platforms.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47996,"journal":{"name":"British Accounting Review","volume":"57 3","pages":"Article 101433"},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2025-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141463231","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}
Johannes Voshaar, Thomas R. Loy, Jochen Zimmermann
{"title":"The impact of lobbying on managerial short-term resource adjustment decisions","authors":"Johannes Voshaar, Thomas R. Loy, Jochen Zimmermann","doi":"10.1016/j.bar.2024.101391","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.bar.2024.101391","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study examines the effect of political lobbying on firms' short-term resource adjustment decisions. Controlling for a wide range of known determinants of managerial cost behaviour, our results suggest that U.S. lobbying firms exhibit significantly less cost stickiness than non-lobbying firms. Lobbying reduces managers' \"wait-and-see games\" as they obtain preferential access to information on political and legislative processes. With early knowledge of impending (political and regulatory) threats and long-lasting downturns, managers can adjust unutilised capacity more swiftly. This effect is more pronounced for firms without alternative information channels like permanent exchange with regulators. Our findings hold for several robustness checks, for instance, controlling for potential sample selection bias or employing alternative measures of lobbying as well as (political) uncertainty and alternative samples.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47996,"journal":{"name":"British Accounting Review","volume":"57 3","pages":"Article 101391"},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2025-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141047232","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":"On professional destabilization and accounting self-regulation","authors":"Zachary Huxley , Marion Brivot","doi":"10.1016/j.bar.2024.101358","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.bar.2024.101358","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The accounting profession faces significant upheaval due to numerous destabilizations in its environment, with financialization being particularly impactful. This paper introduces a theoretical framework to dissect how the profession reacts to such disruptions. We posit that destabilizations give rise to novel types of misconduct, leading professional bodies to re-evaluate their definitions of (un)acceptable accounting behaviours. However, the intrinsically nebulous essence of accounting's foundational logic muddies these recalibrations. This vagueness, when paired with evolving misconduct, undermines specific regulatory measures, possibly instigating further destabilization. Our proposed accounting destabilization and regulation framework is exemplified through a case study focusing on the emerging regulation of valuation advisory work – a service line that is emblematic of financialization – in a Canadian provincial jurisdiction. This case underscores the challenges the profession faces due to financialization, highlighting the current regulatory strategy that treats valuation work as a strictly technical process; an approach that we show is inadequate in mitigating valuation-related misconduct. The paper enriches the literature by introducing a novel theoretical framework for evaluating emerging challenges in accounting regulation, and by delineating the case study's repercussions for the evolving financialized landscape of the accounting profession.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47996,"journal":{"name":"British Accounting Review","volume":"57 3","pages":"Article 101358"},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2025-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139945395","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}