{"title":"Short-sale constraints and firm investment efficiency: Evidence from a natural experiment","authors":"Zhihong Chen , Siwen Fu , Ke Wang","doi":"10.1016/j.jaccpubpol.2023.107149","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jaccpubpol.2023.107149","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>We examine the causal effect of relaxing short-sale constraints on firm investment efficiency using the experiment of the SEC Regulation SHO pilot program. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we find significant treatment effects of the pilot program on mitigating both underinvestment and overinvestment during the pilot period. These treatment effects disappear after the end of the pilot program. The effect on mitigating underinvestment is stronger for firms with severe financial constraints before the pilot period. The pilot program mitigates underinvestment and alleviates financing constraints more for pilot firms that experienced greater improvement in price efficiency after the pilot program began. The effect of the pilot program on mitigating overinvestment is more pronounced for firms with weaker governance and firms with more severe agency problems before the pilot period. These results suggest that relaxing short-sale constraints mitigates underinvestment through the external financing channel by improving price efficiency that alleviate financial constraints; and mitigates overinvestment through the managerial incentive channel by strengthening the disciplinary role of short sellers that enhances managers’ incentives to take correct actions.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48070,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Accounting and Public Policy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135605358","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}
Lacey Donley , Joseph Legoria , Kenneth J. Reichelt , Stephanie Walton
{"title":"Chinese auditor inspection access challenges: The market’s response to integrated US regulatory and legislative action","authors":"Lacey Donley , Joseph Legoria , Kenneth J. Reichelt , Stephanie Walton","doi":"10.1016/j.jaccpubpol.2023.107110","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jaccpubpol.2023.107110","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>We examine the impact of mounting regulator interest in US-listed Chinese firms facing PCAOB inspection access challenges. Our study provides evidence of the market’s response to five events taking place from 2018 to 2020. Collectively, these events mark the first-ever integrated regulatory and legislative response from the PCAOB, SEC, and US legislature since initiation of the PCAOB’s international inspection program. First, we consider whether the PCAOB’s eighth annual update of inaccessible jurisdictions is newsworthy to investors. Next, we consider investors’ perceptions of audit quality risks and delisting risks among Chinese firms. We find that the market does respond negatively towards cross-listed Chinese firms following PCAOB, SEC, and US legislative action. Results further suggest that market reactions are motivated by investors’ perception of a delisting risk among Chinese firms. This observation is most salient among small Chinese firms having fewer listing alternatives outside of the US.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48070,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Accounting and Public Policy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42698707","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":"Political grammars of justification and cost-benefit analysis in SEC rulemaking","authors":"Lisa Baudot , Dana Wallace","doi":"10.1016/j.jaccpubpol.2023.107148","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jaccpubpol.2023.107148","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>We investigate how financial regulators justify rulemaking decisions on socially oriented disclosure rules through evidence-based policymaking (EBPM) mechanisms. To do so, we analyze the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) justifications within the cost-benefit analysis (CBA) it performs when promulgating the conflict minerals disclosure rule mandated by the U.S. Congress. We use a grammatical approach to analyze the SEC’s justificatory discourse wherein a grammar represents implicit rules that actors follow to be recognized as acting appropriately. We find that six key justifications comprise the SEC’s CBA discourse. These justifications reflect public, natural, and realist grammars that connect the SEC’s justifications in a way that aims to legitimize SEC decisions. Specifically, the SEC’s public grammar suggests that the Congressional mandate increases benefits to society and to market participants and increases costs to issuers. The SEC’s discretionary rulemaking, however, reflects a realist grammar that primarily justifies decreased costs to issuers. The SEC’s realist grammar is buffered by a natural grammar in which the SEC supports its justifications by mobilizing constituent comment letters regarding the rule’s costs while paying less attention to evidence consistent with the rule’s benefits. Overall, our evidence indicates regulators employ CBA, a purportedly objective, evidence-based endeavor, to justify tradeoffs between social and financial objectives when regulating social mandates, suggesting the political nature of EBPM mechanisms.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48070,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Accounting and Public Policy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135389957","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}
Yingwen Guo , Yingjie Guo , Phyllis Lai Lan Mo , Xu Zhang
{"title":"Partner-Level internal control opinion shopping and its economic consequences: Evidence from “SOX 404” in an emerging market","authors":"Yingwen Guo , Yingjie Guo , Phyllis Lai Lan Mo , Xu Zhang","doi":"10.1016/j.jaccpubpol.2022.107056","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jaccpubpol.2022.107056","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This study examines whether firms engage in internal control opinion shopping (ICOS) at audit partner level and its economic consequences. Based on the Chinese setting where the identities of audit partners are publicly disclosed and the requirements for internal control reporting are akin to SOX 404, we do find that firms successfully engage in ICOS at partner level. Furthermore, partner-level ICOS is associated with lower earnings quality and more tunneling activities. However, it seems that investors are not able to perceive the ICOS behavior, as evidenced by the indistinguishable market reactions to earnings announcements between ICOS firms and their counterparts. Moreover, successful partner-level ICOS firms do not remedy their internal control weaknesses in a timely manner and are more likely to receive sanctions from regulators. Further analyses suggest that firms engaged in partner-level ICOS are more likely to be charged with higher audit fees and firms whose CEOs are about to retire in the near future are more likely to conduct ICOS. This study fills the gap in the literature by investigating the outcomes of and market reactions to opinion shopping in the context of internal controls.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48070,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Accounting and Public Policy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42766518","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":"Auditors’ sensitivity to business risk under business risk auditing","authors":"Huihui Shen , Liansheng Wu , Jason Zezhong Xiao","doi":"10.1016/j.jaccpubpol.2023.107113","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jaccpubpol.2023.107113","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This study uses Chinese data and a difference-in-differences design to investigate the effect of the adoption of business risk auditing (BRA) on auditors’ sensitivity to business risk. We find that BRA adoption has an incremental positive effect on the relationship between business risk and audit hours in non-state-owned enterprises (NSOEs) but not in state-owned enterprises (SOEs). This result suggests that BRA increases auditors’ sensitivity to business risk in NSOEs. This effect is more pronounced when a client firm has a more complex business or the auditor is a non-Big10 domestic audit firm. The results of further tests show that an increase in audit hours due to BRA adoption results in an improvement in audit quality in NSOEs but not in SOEs. In addition, BRA adoption also has an incremental positive effect on the relationship between business risk and audit fees in NSOEs but not in SOEs.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48070,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Accounting and Public Policy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47037222","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":"Editorial for the special issue on auditing and public policy in China","authors":"Bingxuan Lin , Liansheng Wu , Jason Zezhong Xiao","doi":"10.1016/j.jaccpubpol.2023.107154","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jaccpubpol.2023.107154","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48070,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Accounting and Public Policy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135763051","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}
Feiyang Cheng , Jing Liao , Xutang Liu , Ahmet Sensoy , Shouyu Yao
{"title":"Local happiness and corporate financial misconduct: Does happiness reduce organizational opportunistic behavior?","authors":"Feiyang Cheng , Jing Liao , Xutang Liu , Ahmet Sensoy , Shouyu Yao","doi":"10.1016/j.jaccpubpol.2023.107157","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jaccpubpol.2023.107157","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This study explores the impact of local happiness on corporate financial misconduct. Using large-scale survey data to construct the measurement of the local happiness level, we find that firms headquartered in happier regions are less likely to engage in financial misconduct. Our mechanism analysis indicates that local happiness promotes the building of regional social capital and the cost of misconduct is higher in regions with higher happiness levels, which explains the mitigating effect of local happiness on corporate misconduct. Moreover, the effect of local happiness is more salient when firms are in regions with a lower level of marketization<span> and less financial supervision expenditures and firms with weaker corporate governance mechanisms and risk tolerance. Our results highlight that happiness, a measure of subjective well-being, can serve as a substitute for formal institutions to alleviate organizational misconduct, especially when formal institutions are weak.</span></p></div>","PeriodicalId":48070,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Accounting and Public Policy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135220907","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}
Zayyad Abdul-Baki , Ahmed Diab , Abdulraheem Olayiwola Kadir
{"title":"Resisting institutionalized corruption: The case of public audit in Nigeria","authors":"Zayyad Abdul-Baki , Ahmed Diab , Abdulraheem Olayiwola Kadir","doi":"10.1016/j.jaccpubpol.2022.107052","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jaccpubpol.2022.107052","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>In a highly corrupt environment such as Nigeria, accounting practices have been permeated by corruption in the wider society. As such, several studies on the relationship between accounting and corruption have unveiled a symbiotic association between accountants and corruption. Contrary to this popular viewpoint, this study shows that there are instances of resistance to corruption by accountants in such environments. This study adopts a multiple case study approach. We used two case studies to demonstrate the consistency of the Auditors-General for the Federation (AuGFs) in resisting institutionalized corruption and one case study to show that AuGFs’ resistance is not commonplace in Nigeria. Data were gathered from interviews, videos, and documents. We found that AuGFs resist corruption through the disclosure of accounting irregularities in their audit reports despite the severe consequences associated with exposing corrupt practices in Nigeria. However, they hide this resistance through a number of strategies to sustain the resistance and avert possible repercussions of corruption disclosure. Prior studies of accounting and corruption in developing countries often find accountants enabling corrupt practices through their silence or through active participation in such practices. However, this study shows how accountants also resist corruption in a highly corrupt developing country, which is rare in the literature.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48070,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Accounting and Public Policy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43366806","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}
Qihui Gong , Huilong Liu , Jing Xie , Lingling Zhang
{"title":"How does establishing a branch office affect audit quality? Evidence from China","authors":"Qihui Gong , Huilong Liu , Jing Xie , Lingling Zhang","doi":"10.1016/j.jaccpubpol.2022.107049","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jaccpubpol.2022.107049","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Establishing a branch office may improve audit quality for an audit firm’s existing clients in the same region as the newly established branch by relieving time and financial resource constraints (i.e., the input channel) and reducing information asymmetry between auditors and clients (i.e., the information channel). Conversely, it may reduce audit quality by undermining audit independence (i.e., the audit independence channel). We test these conjectures using data on Chinese listed firms from 2001 to 2019 and the propensity score matching–difference-in-differences method. Our results show that establishing a branch office improves audit quality, and they remain robust to a series of alternative measures for audit quality. Further analyses indicate that the positive effect of establishing a branch office on audit quality is primarily achieved through the information channel. In addition, we find a knowledge transfer effect from the newly established branch to non-local branches within an audit firm. Moreover, establishing a branch office can benefit both auditors and clients because it leads to the provision of higher quality audit services in less time without audit fee increases compared with the situation without the branch office. Our study contributes to the related literature and is of interest to regulators and practitioners.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48070,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Accounting and Public Policy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49667111","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}
LeAnn Luna , Kathleen Schuchard , Danielle Stanley
{"title":"The impact of TCJA on CEO compensation","authors":"LeAnn Luna , Kathleen Schuchard , Danielle Stanley","doi":"10.1016/j.jaccpubpol.2023.107136","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jaccpubpol.2023.107136","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) expanded the impact of IRC Section 162(m) by disallowing a tax deduction for any compensation over $1 million paid to top executives. Under prior law, qualified performance-based compensation was exempt from the $1 million limit. Using OLS regressions, we examine whether TCJA affected CEO compensation immediately after enactment. We find evidence that CEO salaries, non-equity incentive pay, stock awards and total compensation are all higher after TCJA. While the law change increases the after-tax cost of compensation for the average firm, our results show that TCJA did not constrain CEO compensation. However, relative to the average effect, in cross-sectional analyses, we find some evidence that compensation was lower for strong CEOs post TCJA. We also find some evidence that CEOs at firms with high leverage and net deferred tax assets, including tax net operating losses, saw a decrease in various types of incentive compensation post TCJA.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48070,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Accounting and Public Policy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135248282","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}