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We hypothesize that if individual auditors possess unique audit styles that they consistently apply to different audit engagements, then client firms with a common signing auditor will exhibit higher earnings comparability. Using a large sample of Chinese firms, we find that client firms report more comparable earnings when they are audited by the same individual auditor than when they are audited by (1) different audit firms, (2) the same audit firm, but different audit offices, and (3) the same audit office, but different individual auditors. The individual auditor style effect is stronger for larger audit firms, senior signing auditors, and signing auditors with more stable teamwork experience. We also document that having a common signing auditor is associated with lower analyst earnings forecast error and dispersion for client firms. This study contributes to the literature by showing that individual auditors have a significant impact on client firms' earnings comparability.

This study uses a design science approach to examine the consistency between quantitative financial ratios and qualitative narrative disclosures in the annual reports. To extract information on the tone of unstructured qualitative textual data, we first use the term frequency/inverse document frequency (TFIDF) text mining technique to classify each company's narrative disclosure as either “Positive” or “Negative.” For the quantitative information, we use the K-means method to cluster each company's financial performance data into “Good” or “Poor” groups. Consistency is said to occur when the textual and numerical data form either a “Positive-Good” pair or a “Negative-Poor” pair. The design model is presented in a stepwise fashion and therefore is transparent for evaluation and validation. Our evaluation process demonstrates the feasibility of the design model. The evaluation was conducted using listed semiconductor companies in countries with different levels of market development. The results show that U.S. firms are less likely to exaggerate in their narrative disclosures and are more likely to understate their performance in MD&As compared to companies in other markets such as China and Taiwan.

Prior studies find that firms meeting or beating analysts’ earnings expectations (MBE) have higher equity valuation and lower bond yield spread. In contract to those studies which focus on public financial markets, this paper explores a firm’s MBE effect on its private loan terms, including price and non-price terms. We find that, despite the fact that banks possess superior information access and processing abilities that reduce information asymmetry costs for borrowers, they still impose more favorable price (i.e., lower loan spread) and non-price (longer loan maturity) terms for firms meeting expectations than for firms missing expectations. In addition, we find that the benefits of meeting expectations (i.e. lower loan spread and longer maturity) are more pronounced for financially distressed firms (habitual beaters) than financially sound firms (sporadic beaters). Further analyses document whether and how prospect theory can be used to explain differential loan terms.

This study examines whether local leads benefit bank loan contracting. Based on 2019 loans from emerging markets in 2000–2010, we find significant differences in the lending behaviors between foreign and local lead banks. Foreign lead loans contain significantly higher spread and more financial covenants than those led by all local banks. The inclusion of local banks to colead loans deliver contracting benefits as we find mixed lead loans offer lower spread and prescribe substantially more financial covenants than all foreign lead banks. Local bank involvement reduces information asymmetry between foreign lenders and local borrowers, resulting in less rigorous contracting terms.

The primary objective of this paper is to examine the associations among managerial ability, political connections and enforcement actions for financial reporting misrepresentation (hereafter financial reporting fraud) in China. Using a sample of listed firms in China during 2007–2012, we first find that increased managerial ability leads to less financial reporting fraud. Second, political connections of firms can weaken or limit the effect of managerial ability on the likelihood of financial statement fraud. Further analyses indicate that the results are primarily driven by non-state-owned firms, rather than state-owned firms. Finally, we further find that firms with capable managers face less severe penalties by the regulatory agencies relative to those without capable managers.

Stock-based compensation has been viewed as an important mechanism for tying managers’ wealth to firm performance, and thus alleviating the agency conflict between the shareholders and the managers when ownership is diffused. However, in a concentrated ownership structure, controlling owners are usually the management of the firm; they can engage in self-dealing activities to the detriment of minority shareholders’ interests. Yet, outside investors may anticipate the problem and discount the share price for the entrenchment behaviors they observe. In this study, we investigate how controlling owners trade off the benefits and the costs of using stock-based compensation. Based on a sample of Taiwanese firms, our evidence shows that stock-based compensation is negatively related to the agency problem embedded in a concentrated ownership structure. This relationship is evident among firms with more frequent equity offerings. Overall, our empirical evidence suggests that controlling owners consider the negative price effects of stock-based compensation and trade off these costs with the benefits of expropriating minority shareholders’ interests, particularly when firms seek more external equity capital. Our results hold after controlling for selection bias and share collateral by controlling owners.

This study examines the effects of the mandatory adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) on the contract terms of bank loans in a global setting. Using a difference-in-differences design based on 26,474 bank loans in 31 countries during the 2000–2011 period, we find that borrowers who mandatorily adopt IFRS experience an increase in interest rates, a reduction in the use of accounting-based financial covenants, an increase in the likelihood that a loan is collateralized, a reduction in loan maturity, and an increase in the fraction of a loan retained by lead arrangers. These findings are robust to the removal of the 2008 financial crisis from our analysis, as well as to the matching of IFRS and non-IFRS borrowers on various country- and firm-level characteristics. Furthermore, we find that these changes are more pronounced for borrowers with greater financial reporting changes, as well as those with poorer accounting quality after IFRS adoption. JEL Classifications: G15; G21; F34; M41.

SYNOPSIS The PCAOB has recently issued two concept releases that seek feedback on a proposal that requires audit firms to disclose the name of the engagement partner in the audit report. This paper provides evidence about the efficacy of this proposal by examining whether industry audit experts at the partner level are valued by stakeholders—lenders in the syndicate loan market. Our paper is based on the unique data in Taiwan, where the audit report is issued in the name of two signing auditors, as well as the audit firm. Prior research suggests that lead arrangers prefer to hold a lower share of the loan and to have a larger number of other lenders. First, we find no evidence that Big 4 audit firms are related to the lower share of a syndicated loan held by the lead arrangers, after controlling for industry audit expertise; we also find no evidence that firm-level expertise alone is associated with the share held by lead arrangers. However, we do find that partner-level industry audit experts, either alone or in conjunction with a firm-level industry audit expert, are associated with the lower share of syndicated loans held by lead arrangers. Second, we find that the number of lenders in general (or the number of foreign lenders in particular) in a loan is the largest when borrowers retain industry audit experts at both the firm and partner levels.

Prior research shows that family firms have better earnings quality than non-family firms in common-law countries and highly developed markets. In contrast, we do not find a significant difference in the financial reporting quality between family and non-family firms in the context of a civil-law system and less developed market. We show that the financial reporting quality of family firms is conditioned on: (1) the divergence between the controlling shareholders� voting rights and their cash flow rights, and (2) the firm's reputation for integrity, while these two conditions do not explain the restatement likelihood for non-family firms. Moreover, when accounting irregularities are detected in the case of family firms, they are associated with more serious accounting restatements. Together, these results imply that the severity of the conflict between ultimate and minority shareholders, and a lack of integrity, explain the propensity for making financial restatements among family firms in a regime characterized as having weak investor protection and concentrated ownership structures.

This paper explores the impact of international diversification on the decision to hold conference calls. In addition, we examine the mitigating roles of legal environment and agency problems in holding conference calls. Using a sample drawn from Taiwan, we find that greater corporate internationalization (INT) is associated with a higher likelihood of holding conference calls. We also find that firms are more likely to conduct conference calls when companies invest in a higher proportion of common law countries. We also find that the positive association between the likelihood of holding conference calls and corporate INT is less pronounced when the control divergence of controlling owners increases.

We examine the relationship between weather effects and investor response to a firm's quarterly earnings announcements using data from 20 countries. Our results show that market cumulative abnormal returns are associated with unexpected earnings and with weather measures. Investors in some countries respond more negatively (less positively) to bad (good) earnings news when earnings are announced on cloudy days than on sunny days. We also find an asymmetric weather effect that is more significant for bad earnings announcements, on average. Moreover, the extent of this weather effect is less for countries with higher financial information transparency and those with common-law systems.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of corporate internationalization, governance structures, and legal protections on the foreign earnings response coefficient (FERC). The FERC is a measure of the value‐relevance of foreign earnings.Design/methodology/approachData were collected on 3,653 Taiwanese firms which had overseas investments. The authors examined the impact of the site of their overseas investments and the nature of the legal code of the investee country on the investor perceptions of firms' reported foreign and domestically‐generated earnings. Also examined was the impact of corporate governance arrangements (e.g. the difference between the owners' cash flow and voting rights) on the same components of the firms' earnings.FindingsThe empirical findings suggest that an aggressive internationalization strategy (foreign direct investment) has positive effects on the value relevance of foreign earnings, but that this strategy is impacted by the firm's own corporate governance arrangements and the target of its overseas investment efforts. While foreign investments bring about growth and profits, they expose the investors to the risk of expropriation by investee countries and corporate insiders.Originality/valueThe importance of the findings is that they should help regulatory agencies – and firms themselves – to better understand factors that can promote the global expansion of domestic enterprises.

This study examines the relationship between foreign institutional ownership and voluntary disclosure in an emerging market. By exploiting a unique dataset of daily foreign investment flow and ownership data from Taiwan, this paper examines whether foreign ownership is associated with the likelihood of holding conference calls and investigates whether conference calls are informative to foreign market participants. After controlling for other characteristics of a firm’s information environment, we find that the decision to hold conference calls is positively associated with foreign institutional ownership. We also provide evidence that the trading turnover by foreign institutional investors immediately increases after the conference calls, indicating that conference calls are informative for foreign institutional investors. Our results are robust, after controlling for endogeneity.

SUMMARY This paper first examines whether the Big 4 audit quality is associated with auditor industry expertise, measured as both individual partner- and audit firm-level leadership. We focus on a sample of listed firms in Taiwan, where audit reports must be audited and signed by the two signing auditors as well as by an audit firm. For accruals analyses, we find that differential discretionary accruals due to industry expertise are driven by a combination of firm and partner expertise. For audit opinion analyses, we find that differential likelihood of a modified audit opinion (hereafter, MAO) is primarily attributable to signing auditor specialists. We also find that firm-level specialists alone are not associated with a higher likelihood of issuing a MAO. However, firm-level specialists, in combination with signing auditor specialists, can add something over and above the effects of the signing auditor specialists alone. Second, we further examine whether there is differential audit quality between signing auditors (i.e., lead and concurring auditors). We find that clients of lead signing auditor specialists, either alone or in conjunction with concurring auditor specialists, have smaller accruals and are more likely to receive a MAO compared to those of nonspecialists. However, concurring auditor specialists alone are not associated with higher audit quality, in terms of either smaller accruals or a higher MAO likelihood. Thus, we conclude that industry expertise is not homogeneous across individual auditors within the same audit firm in Taiwan. Data Availability: Data are available from the sources identified in the text.

This paper examines whether the likelihood of accounting restatements is associated with the Big 4 industry auditor specialists, measured at both the partner–level and audit firm-level leadership. We focus on a sample of listed firms in Taiwan where audit reports must be audited and signed by the two signing auditors as well as by an audit firm. Extending previous studies (e.g., Francis, Reichelt, and Wang 2005, 2006), we classify industry specialists into three groups: (1) auditors that are industry specialists at both the individual partner-level (i.e. the lead signing auditors) and the firm-level; (2) auditors that are industry specialists at the individual partner-level, but not at the firm-level; and (3) auditors that are industry specialists at the firm-level, but not at the individual partner-level. The results reveal that clients of signing auditor specialists, either alone or in conjunction with firm-level specialists, are less likely to make accounting restatements relative to those of other auditors. We find no evidence that firm-level auditor specialists alone are associated with a smaller likelihood of accounting restatements. However, a firm-level industry expert does matter in the presence of the lead auditor being an expert. The results suggest that differential likelihood of accounting restatements due to the Big 4 industry expertise is primarily attributable to the signing partner specialists rather than to auditor specialists at the firm level. We also find that differential restatement likelihood due to signing auditors’ expertise is driven by the lead auditor’s expertise, rather than by the concurring auditor’s expertise.

The primary objective of this study is to investigate the impact of corporate internationalization on earnings management. We also explore the mitigating roles of corporate ownership structure, as measured by divergence of controlling owner's control and cash rights, and the proportion of firms that operate in common law countries on earnings management. Using a sample drawn from Taiwan, we find that greater corporate internationalization is associated with a higher level of earnings management, as proxied by discretionary accruals and the likelihood of exactly meeting or just beating analyst forecast. Corporate internationalization is measured by the ratio of foreign assets to total assets, foreign operational country scope, and the number of foreign investees, respectively. In addition, we find that companies can reduce the negative effects of internationalization on earnings management by improving their corporate ownership structures or investing in a higher proportion of common law countries where there is a better investor legal protection environment and higher information transparency.

The agency problem of listed companies in East Asia is closely related to their typically concentrated ownership structures. Tight control creates an entrenchment problem that allows the controlling owners' self-interested behaviors to go unchallenged internally by the boards of directors or externally by takeover markets. The primary objective of this paper is to explore the association between the ownership and control structure and innovation. The ownership and control structure is measured first as the divergence between the ultimate owner's voting rights and the ultimate owner's cash flow rights, and second by the presence of ultimately controlling shareholder's family member as CEO or Chairman of the board, or both. Innovation is measured by patent quantity and patent quality. This paper uses patents granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to measure innovation activities. We find that innovation is significantly and negatively related to the level of agency problems. We further find that innovation is lower for firms whose controlling owner is also either the chief executive officer or the chair of the board of directors. Our findings appear to be robust with respect to examining patent count and patent quality variables.

The main purpose of this study is to investigate whether the likelihood, frequency, and information content of conference calls are positively associated with innovation. The study is based on 534 conference calls conducted in 340 firm-years from 1997 to 2001 in Taiwan. Our findings indicate that more innovative firms are more likely to conduct conference calls and conduct them more frequently than less innovative firms. Consistent with prior research, high-growth firms and larger firms are more likely to hold conference calls, and hold them more frequently, than other firms. Low price-earnings firms are, nonetheless, more likely and frequent to host conference calls when their stock price has been undervalued. We also find supporting evidence that cumulative abnormal returns surrounding the event dates of conference calls are positively associated with the level of and change in innovation investments. In addition, our empirical results of market reaction driven by conference calls are still robust after controlling the effect of selection bias, market expectation, and timing of conducting conference calls. Finally, we also find that firms that are more innovative are more likely to discuss innovation activities during conference calls.

This paper examines the association between the quality of voluntary earnings forecasts, as measured by forecast bias and accuracy reviewed by an incumbent CPAs, and the purchase of non-audit services (NAS) from the incumbent auditor. In the context of this study, we focus primarily on the Taiwanese market. Unlike in the UK and US, management forecasts must be reviewed by the incumbent CPA in Taiwan. Besides, enforcement of rules with regard to the provision of review-level assurance for management earnings forecasts tends to be less stringent than one of audit-level assurance for financial reporting. Using panel data of audit and non-audit fees available for Taiwanese firms, we find that firms with a high ratio of NAS tend to issue more optimistically biased and inaccurate forecasts under a lower auditor liability regime. These results provide some support for concerns expressed about the potential impact of unusually high levels of NAS on auditor independence and ultimately, the quality of audited financial reports. The findings also suggest that examining the auditor, and in particular, the provision of non-audit services, in isolation of an institutional environment provides an incomplete analysis of financial reporting.

Firm performance is, among other factors, a function of tangible and intangible assets that the firm possesses and utilizes to maximize value. While research has examined the impact of advertising and R&D on firm performance, in this chapter we, in addition, examine the extent of innovation as measured by patents granted on firm performance. Our findings indicate that overall, innovative activity as measured by number of patents granted, significantly influences firm performance as measured by Tobin's q. Hence patenting activity is value relevant to investors. Further, this relationship is more pronounced when the patents are granted in the United States. We conclude that markets tend to give greater credence to innovative activity when patents are granted to foreign firms by the U.S. Patenting Office. Finally, the stage of the product in the industry chain moderates the influence of patenting activity on firm performance. When patents are granted in the design stage the impact on firm performance is stronger relative to when patents are granted in the manufacturing and packaging and testing stages. The evidence indicates that patents by companies in the manufacturing end of the chain have a more pronounced impact on firm performance relative to patents granted in the packaging and testing stage.

Innovation capital are typically expensed and/or unrecognized as assets under current generally accepted accounting principles. This results in accounting-related information asymmetry. This paper examines the association of innovation capital (as measured here by the proxies of R&D expenditures and granted patents) and initial public offerings (IPO) anomalies. These anomalies include initial IPO underpricing, duration of honeymoon (a distinct feature of the Taiwanese IPO environment), and long-term performance. The theoretical model underlying this research is a signaling model. The results indicate that more innovative firms are more likely to be underpriced, and have longer honeymoon periods than less innovative firms. Further, the more innovative firms have positive and growing long-term market-adjusted returns. This stands in contrast to the declining long-term stock performance of initial public offering firms that is evidenced in the literature. We conclude that pre-IPO research and development expenditures disclosed in the IPO prospectus, official monthly reports of newly developed patents released to the public, and the frequency of patent citations significantly signal both underpricing and future market performance of IPO firms in Taiwan.

This study examines whether the Taiwanese regulation requiring disclosure of earnings forecasts in the IPOs resulted in disclosure of more optimistic earnings forecasts and whether the forecast error was reduced more by manipulating the reported earnings rather than revising the earnings forecasts to meet the forecast error threshold. The study is based on 759 forecasts issued by the Taiwanese IPO firms from 1994 to 2001, i.e. 8-year period after the regulation was modified to increase the forecast error threshold to 20%. The findings show that the disclosure regulation resulted in more optimistic forecasts than conservative forecasts, especially for firms expecting better performance in the forecast year compared to the previous year. Firms disclosing optimistic earnings forecasts engaged more in manipulation of reported earnings than revision of forecasts to meet the forecast error threshold. These findings thus suggest that the disclosure regulation resulted in earnings manipulation, which reduced the quality of reported earnings.

Although prior research has examined the effect of patent citations on Tobin's Q in a variety of environments, in this study we examine whether the parameters are affected by stage of a company in the value chain. Unlike other national semiconductor firms, Taiwanese semiconductor firms typically specialize in one of the value-added activities, namely, either design or manufacturing or packaging and testing. Our finding is that the effect of patent citation on Tobin's Q is accentuated when the firm is at the front end of the value chain and diminishes as we proceed to the back end. This finding is novel in the literature. We also find that frequency of patent citations and R&D spillover are positive and significant in relation to Tobin's Q. In addition, the effect of R&D spillover on Tobin's Q is more pronounced for firms in the design sector relative to other sectors.

Convertible bond (CB) issuers have been required to include financial forecasts in prospectuses filed with the Taiwan Securities and Futures Commission (TSFC) since 1991. This study examines the association between CB issuance terms and the extent of optimistic initial earnings forecasts and earnings management, as well as the association between CB issuance terms and the extent of reported (post-managed) earnings forecasts. Empirical results indicate that: (1) the likelihood of the issuing company making an optimistic initial earnings forecast (positive initial forecast error) increases with conversion price, issuance amount, and issuance period, but decreases with an increasing conversion period and reselling premium; (2) earnings management was pervasive in the year of issue of the CB; and (3) a substitutive relation exists between earnings management and issuance terms in CB issuing.

This study examines whether a regulation on mandatory disclosure of financial forecasts since June 1991 and further sanction imposition since March 1998 contribute to lower IPO firms’ initial and aftermarket returns, and shorten honeymoon periods. The study is based on 423 IPO firms after the regulation required them to disclose their forecasts and 53 IPO firms prior to the regulation. The findings report that initial and aftermarket returns are lower, and honeymoon periods are shorter in the post‐regulation period than those in the pre‐regulation. The findings also report that initial and aftermarket returns are relatively smaller, and the honeymoon periods are shorter after the March 1998 regulatory sanction was imposed after controlling other variables. These results document that the financial forecasts disclosure regulation evidently contributes to mitigating information asymmetry.

This study examines the impact of mandatory adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) on bank loan contractual terms. Our sample covers more than 20,000 bank loans for borrowers from 23 countries that mandate IFRS adoption and 16 countries that do not mandate IFRS adoption during the 2000-2009 period. We find that relative to borrowers from countries not mandating IFRS adoption, those from IFRS-mandating countries experience an increase in loan interest rates, a reduction in the use of accounting-based financial covenants, an increase in the likelihood that a loan is collateralized, and a reduction in loan maturity subsequent to mandatory adoption of IFRS. Further analysis reveals that these changes occur primarily in borrowers that experience a greater increase in income smoothing or aggressive reporting of accounting accruals subsequent to IFRS adoption. These findings suggest that the IFRS mandate has uneven impacts on accounting quality, and banks alter loan contractual terms in response to these changes accordingly.

The unique institutions in Taiwan may add to our understanding of the effect of initial public offering (IPO) firm disclosures. Consistent with the notion of market mispricing, most of Taiwan's IPOs were with consecutive up-limit hits followed by substantial price reversals. In this study, we decompose IPO underpricing into two components: pure underpricing and subsequent reversal, exploring the impact of the 1991 mandate that IPO firms should include their management forecasts in the prospectuses on these two anomaly measures. Our results support the notion that disclosure regulations ameliorate investors' mispricing the stocks. First, pure underpricing and reversal are significantly less (more) pronounced for post-mandate (pre-mandate) IPO stocks. In contrast, consistent with the cheap talk hypothesis, the pre-mandate voluntary forecasters (non-forecasters) appear to be more (less) underpriced. Second, the duration of underpricing for the post-mandate (pre-mandate) IPOs appears to be shorter (longer). Nevertheless, underpricing lasted relatively longer (shorter) for the pre-mandate IPOs with (with no) voluntary disclosures. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This study investigates the impact of corporate internationalization and the development status of investee countries on the foreign earnings response coefficient (FERC), which is a measure of the value-relevance of foreign earnings. To improve competitiveness, firms worldwide have expanded aggressively into foreign markets, thereby increasing their exposure to external risks and uncertainties on the one hand, and sources of growth and reward on the other. Using a Taiwanese sample, we found that greater corporate internationalization via investments in developed countries was positively related to the foreign ERC. We expected, and found, that companies can enhance the positive effects of internationalization by investing in countries that are relatively better developed than in countries that are less well developed. The public policy implications of these findings are discussed.