D.G. DeBoskey, Yan Luo and Jeff Wang
The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of board gender diversity on the transparency of corporate political disclosure (CPD).
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of board gender diversity on the transparency of corporate political disclosure (CPD).
Design/methodology/approach
Two empirical proxies, CPD transparency and policy transparency, are constructed from a data set jointly produced by the Center of Political Activity and the Carol and Lawrence Zicklin Center for Business Ethics Research. The CPD transparency score measures the level of transparency in voluntary corporate disclosure of the amount of political contributions and the identity of the recipients as well as the titles and names of the executives who authorize the political spending. The policy transparency score measures the level of transparency in the voluntary disclosure of the policies governing corporate political spending. Board gender diversity is measured by the percentage of women on the board of directors.
Findings
Higher proportions of female directors are associated with more transparent disclosure of political contributions after controlling for a set of corporate governance and firm-level variables.
Originality/value
This study is the first to examine whether and how gender-diversified boards enhance the transparency of CPD. It contributes to the literature by providing evidence that gender-diversified boards enhance corporate governance.
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While the determinants of voluntary political spending disclosure have been extensively studied in the literature, there remains a lack of clear evidence regarding the specific…
Abstract
Purpose
While the determinants of voluntary political spending disclosure have been extensively studied in the literature, there remains a lack of clear evidence regarding the specific impacts of managerial ability and political risk on such disclosure. Thus, the purpose of this study is to shed light on whether and how managerial ability and political risk influence firms’ political spending disclosure.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses a sample of 2,242 firm-year observations of S&P 500 companies between 2013 and 2021.
Findings
This study finds that firms with high-ability managers generally disclose more information about political spending. This positive relationship between managerial ability and political spending disclosure holds even after conducting additional tests to address potential endogeneity concerns. Furthermore, this study finds that firms operating in high-risk political environments also exhibit a greater propensity to disclose information regarding their political spending. The results remain robust to alternative measures of managerial ability and political risk.
Practical implications
This study suggests that when designing policy to motivate firms to disclose political spending information, policy makers need to be aware of the critical role of managerial ability and idiosyncratic political risk the firm faces. In addition, this study offers insights to shareholders, advocacy groups, regulators and academics interested in understanding the determinants of political spending disclosure.
Originality/value
This study is among the first to provide empirical evidence that political spending disclosure can be explained by managerial ability and political risk. In addition, this study complements the literature on the consequences of managerial ability and political risk. Focusing on voluntary political spending disclosure, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of the factors shaping the overall corporate information environment.
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Yosra Mnif and Imen Slimi
This paper aims to examine the impact of the auditor's characteristics on bank's earnings management (EM) through loan loss provisions (LLP) for African banks.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine the impact of the auditor's characteristics on bank's earnings management (EM) through loan loss provisions (LLP) for African banks.
Design/methodology/approach
This study is based on 360 bank-year observations from 14 African countries for the period 2011–2016, discretionary LLP is used as proxy for EM. Panel regressions have been conducted.
Findings
The authors' findings reveal that auditor's industry specialization and tenure exert a negative and significant influence on the extent of LLP-based EM. The results also show that total fees paid to the banks' auditors are positively related to the extent of EM. In a further analysis, the authors find that industry specialist auditors are more effective in reducing the incoming-increasing. Similarly, the positive relationship previously found between EM and total fees still holds only for income-increasing. Moreover, auditor tenure negatively impacts both income-increasing and income-decreasing EM. As for auditor change, results reveal differential effect on EM.
Originality/value
The current research extends prior literature and provides an understanding of an important external monitoring mechanism, the external audit, within African banks. To the best of the authors' knowledge, there is a paucity of cross-country studies that has addressed the influence of auditors' attributes on banks' EM in Africa.
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Unlike other types of corporate disclosure, corporate political disclosure (CPD), which is the disclosure of corporate political contributions and the related governing policies…
Abstract
Purpose
Unlike other types of corporate disclosure, corporate political disclosure (CPD), which is the disclosure of corporate political contributions and the related governing policies and oversight mechanisms, does not provide completely new information to stakeholders. Some of the information disclosed in CPD is available from other public records (e.g. the Federal Election Committee website or OpenSecrets website). Given this unique feature of CPD, it is interesting to investigate the cost and benefit tradeoff for firms of altering their CPD practice in response to policy and political uncertainty.
Design/methodology/approach
This study employs recently developed indexes of aggregate economic policy uncertainty (EPU) and a novel dataset of CPD transparency to examine the impact of EPU on CPD transparency and how the proprietary cost of corporate political activities moderates this association. The sample consists of S&P 500 companies from the 2012 to 2019 period.
Findings
The authors document that firms mitigate the heightened information asymmetry associated with higher aggregate EPU by increasing CPD transparency. The positive association between EPU and CPD is less pronounced for firms that are more sensitive to EPU, for firms that more actively manage EPU through corporate political contributions or lobbying activities and for firms that are followed by more analysts. The authors also find that more transparent CPD helps to mitigate the information asymmetry caused by heightened EPU. This study’s results hold when the authors control for other types of voluntary corporate disclosure.
Originality/value
This study contributes to the emerging literature on the determinants of CPD transparency by identifying EPU's positive impact on CPD transparency. This study also provides empirical evidence that the proprietary costs arising from the controversial nature of corporate political activities dampen firms' incentives to provide transparent CPD in response to heightened EPU, and that information on corporate political activities gathered and processed by financial analysts seems to lower the marginal benefit to companies of publicizing CPD on their own website.
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The purpose of this study is to examine whether audit quality influences auditees' liquidity policy.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to examine whether audit quality influences auditees' liquidity policy.
Design/methodology/approach
The author uses ordinary least squares (OLS) estimators, and we focus on a panel of US publicly traded companies (36,118 company-year observations) over the period of 2004–2019 to examine the effect of audit quality on auditees' cash reserves.
Findings
The author finds that high quality audits are negatively related to auditees' cash reserves. Additional analyses show that the potential channel by which audit quality influences these reserves is financial constraints (FC). Particularly, his results suggest that an auditee's FC serve as an intermediary in the association between audit quality and auditee's cash reserves. Ultimately, we show that high quality audits raise the market value relevance of an extra dollar in cash reserves.
Originality/value
By linking two distinct research lines of audit quality and corporate cash reserves, this study adds to both lines of literature, as it is a novel one (to the best of the author’s knowledge) to provide evidence about the effect of audit quality on the auditees' liquidity policy (a real economic decision and internal financial policy) that ultimately boosts the auditees' investment efficiency. The author’s findings are consistent with influential monitoring and an insurance-like function of high quality audits in reducing information asymmetry and its consequences. His results also support the argument that auditees' transparency through high quality audits can be a pivotal determinant of their liquidity policy.
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Najib Sahyoun and Michel Magnan
This paper aims to examine the relation between voluntary disclosure (VD) in audit committee reports and banks’ earnings management. It investigates whether such disclosure…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine the relation between voluntary disclosure (VD) in audit committee reports and banks’ earnings management. It investigates whether such disclosure reflects an attempt by audit committees to engage in impression management.
Design/methodology/approach
The study considers top US bank holding companies from 2006 to 2015. The authors develop a scoring grid to measure VD in audit committee reports. The scoring grid is based on recommendations from 10 industry and governance organizations’ reports that analyzed audit committee disclosures. Multivariate regression analyzes are used in this paper.
Findings
Descriptive statistics reveal that the level of VD in audit committee reports did not increase significantly from 2006 to 2015. Multivariate analyzes indicate that whenever banks’ level of earnings management is high, audit committees increase the extent of their VDs in their reports. The authors infer from this finding that audit committees are using VDs as a vehicle for impression management.
Originality/value
This paper sheds light onto the motives behind audit committees’ VDs. The evidence, which is consistent with impression management by audit committees in their report, also provides further background to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s recent initiative to enhance VDs in the audit committee report.
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Rami Salem, Ernest Ezeani, Ali Meftah Gerged and Bilal Bilal
This study aims to examine how banks’ credit ratings can be driven by the quality of the disclosed financial and nonfinancial information in emerging economies.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to examine how banks’ credit ratings can be driven by the quality of the disclosed financial and nonfinancial information in emerging economies.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a sample of 1,590 bank-year observations of 29 Islamic and 77 conventional banks across 17 MENA countries from 2006 to 2020, we conducted a random-effects regression model that is supported by various methods, including 2SLS and GMM models, to overcome the potential incidence of endogeneity concerns.
Findings
We found that the quality of voluntary disclosure positively influences the credit rating of Islamic and conventional banks. Although the spread and usefulness of disclosed information are positively associated with banks’ ratings, the quantity dimension is not. Audit quality also significantly influences Islamic banks’ credit ratings compared to their traditional counterparts.
Practical implications
Our evidence offers practical implications for regulators and standards setters in emerging economies to develop more effective disclosure regimes to enhance the impact of the quality of banks’ voluntary disclosures on their credit ratings.
Originality/value
Our paper contributes to the existing literature by investigating the effect of the quality of voluntary disclosures on credit ratings along three dimensions: quantity, spread and usefulness of the information. Further, our research contributes to the international accounting literature by investigating the effect of audit quality on the credit ratings of both conventional and Islamic banks in a cross-country setting.
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Wei Xiong, Tingting Liu, Xu Zhao and Zihan Xiao
This paper explores the association between directors’ and officers’ liability insurance (D&O insurance) and management tone manipulation.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper explores the association between directors’ and officers’ liability insurance (D&O insurance) and management tone manipulation.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses data from A-share listed non-financial companies from 2009 to 2021 as its sample for empirical tests. In addition, the study relies on text analysis and the construction of models to investigate the relationship between D&O insurance and management tone manipulation.
Findings
The authors find that the purchase of D&O insurance will lead to management tone manipulation in the “management discussion and analysis” part of companies’ annual reports, and operating risk and agent cost are the two paths for the effect. Further analysis shows that having a male CEO and employing high-quality auditors can weaken the positive impact of D&O insurance on tone manipulation.
Originality/value
This paper provides a new approach for studying the literature related to D&O insurance and management behavior, and the findings enrich our understanding of the influencing factors and the mechanism of management tone manipulation, thus revealing policy implications for further standardization of the terms and system of D&O insurance in China.
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Roua Radhouani and Aymen Ajina
This paper aims to examine the influence of board gender diversity on corporate anti-corruption disclosure (ACD) and the role of the Sapin II Law.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine the influence of board gender diversity on corporate anti-corruption disclosure (ACD) and the role of the Sapin II Law.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors used panel data regressions on a sample of French listed firms from 2010–2020. Keywords-based content analysis is used to measure ACD. Additionally, the Difference-in-Differences (DID) model investigate whether the ACD levels with high and low female directors’ changes before and after the Sapin II Law.
Findings
There is a positive relationship between female directors and corporate ACD. This relation is particularly significant in firms who applies the Sapin II Law.
Research limitations/implications
The authors focus solely on larger French listed companies, which may not reflect small and medium-sized businesses. Due to data limitations, the authors could not include demographic factors like age, education and experience that could influence company behavior. Furthermore, self-reported data may not adequately reveal illicit practices within these companies.
Practical implications
The relationship between board gender diversity and corruption disclosure informs policymakers on reforms for female directors. The findings also aid investors and suggest that managers should view gender diversity as a governance tool to reduce corruption.
Originality/value
This paper is original in focusing on ACD and using a DID methodology to assess the impact of the Sapin II Law. It uniquely investigates threshold effects between board gender diversity and ACD and examines the French context, including the Copé-Zimmermann Law’s gender diversity mandate.
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Dorcus Kalembe, Twaha Kigongo Kaawaase, Stephen Korutaro Nkundabanyanga and Isaac Newton Kayongo
The purpose of this study is to establish the relationship between chief executive officer (CEO) power, audit committee effectiveness and earnings quality in regulated firms in…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to establish the relationship between chief executive officer (CEO) power, audit committee effectiveness and earnings quality in regulated firms in Uganda.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors employed cross-sectional and correlational research designs, based on a sample of 136 regulated firms in Uganda. Data were collected using a questionnaire survey from Chief Finance Officers and Chief Audit Executives. Data were analyzed using a Statistical Package for Social Sciences and Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling.
Findings
Results indicate that CEO power causes negative variances in earnings quality. The results also reveal that audit committee effectiveness positively relates relatively similarly with earnings quality. In addition, CEO power and audit committee effectiveness are negative and significantly related. The results further indicate that CEO power and earnings quality are mediated by audit committee effectiveness.
Research limitations/implications
CEO power creates an opaque accounting environment which may leave the stakeholders unable to evaluate the true economic reality of the firm. Audit committee effectiveness is an important enabler for reporting high-quality earnings even in the presence of a powerful CEO.
Originality/value
This study contributes toward a methodological stance of using perceptions to understand earnings quality in regulated firms in Uganda. This is probably the first study that has specifically explored earnings quality using only the fundamental qualitative characteristics of accounting information (as proxies) as enshrined in the Conceptual Framework for Financial Reporting 2018 particularly in Uganda since Her adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards in 1998. Second, the indirect effect of audit committee effectiveness and CEO power is tested.