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Over the past years, studies shed light on how social norms and perceptions potentially affect loan repayments, with overtones for strategic default. Motivated by this strand of the literature, we incorporate collective social traits in predictive frameworks on credit card delinquencies. We propose the use of a two-stage framework. This allows us to segment a market into homogeneous sub-populations at the regional level in terms of social traits, which may proxy for perceptions and potentially unravelled behaviours. On these formed sub-populations, delinquency prediction models are fitted at a second stage. We apply this framework to a big dataset of 3.3 million credit card holders spread in 12 UK NUTS1 regions during the period 2015–2019. We find that segmentation based on social traits yields efficiency gains in terms of both computational and predictive performance compared to prediction in the overall population. This finding holds and is sustained in the long run for different sub-samples, lag counts, class imbalance correction or alternative clustering solutions based on individual and socio-economic attributes. Graphical abstract

Summarization: We propose a holistic evaluation framework that banks could adopt when screening corporate entities. The framework is based on the development of a composite indicator of social, environmental and financial performance. This integrated view of evaluation is conceptually aligned with ISO standards and empirical proposals of academics and market practitioners in defining inclusive performance. We complement those proposals with a methodological framework that permits incorporation of a plethora of viewpoints in the evaluation process, reflecting the expectations of the various stakeholders in the environment of a bank. We further enhance the evaluation process with analytics of a more detailed hierarchical view of performance, fine-tuning of the evaluation process, and provide implications and suggestions to the senior executive team of a bank’s clients. Presented on: European Journal of Operational Research

Public awareness about issues surrounding the physical environment and climate change is becoming more important around the world. However, there is a lack of research on the association between environment-related perceptions and reputational exposure. Therefore, we know little about whether and how reputational exposure is shaped by institutional pressures, as it would be stipulated by the institutional theory. Using a sample of 643 firms from 19 European countries over the period 2015–2018, we aim to shed further light on this issue. Our results show that more environmentally-friendly public perceptions result in lower reputational exposure. This finding holds when, on an individual basis, we examine public opinions on energy, climate, and the introduction of related policies. To ensure robustness in our results, we conduct a number of analyses and tests designed to alleviate endogeneity and to correct sample bias.

Using a global sample, this study sketches the impact of insurance regulations on the life insurance sector, revealing a significant negative association between supervisory control on policy conditions of life annuities as well as pension products and the development of the industry. A similar inverse relation is observed between the index of capital requirements and insurance development. These results hold when we control for demographic factors, economic factors, religious inclination, culture, as well as for other relevant regulations. We also find some evidence that while the overall supervisory power does not matter, the ability to intervene at an early stage could have a positive effect on insurance development. Additionally, the impact of some regulations appears to differ between advanced and developing countries.

Using a sample of around 30 countries over the period 2001–2015, this study provides evidence that deeply rooted cultural differences are significantly associated with the use of mortgage debt. More detailed, we find that power distance and uncertainty avoidance have a negative impact on the value of the total outstanding residential loans to GDP. This finding is robust across various specifications and the use of alternative measures of mortgage debt. In contrast, trust has a positive and robust impact on all the measures of mortgage debt. Other dimensions of national culture like long-term orientation, individualism, and indulgence, also appear to matter; however, their impact depends on the control variables and the employed measure of mortgage debt.

This special issue consists of selected papers from the 9th International Conference of the Financial Engineering and Banking Society (FEBS) organized by the Prague University of Economics and Busi...

This paper aims to examine whether and how, certain country-specific characteristics shape the profitability of SMEs. Using a large sample of around 40,000 firms operating in 25 EU countries over the period 2006–2014 we find that freedom from corruption, a better environment in terms of the conditions that could contribute to the ease of getting credit, and fewer government regulation related to the starting, operating, and closing a business, enhance profitability. The dimensions of national culture also play an important role. Our results show that individualism, masculinity, and long-term orientation have a positive impact on profitability, whereas power distance and uncertainty avoidance have the opposite effect. We also find that the magnitude of the impact of national culture on profitability depends on political stability and institutional quality.

The gravity of insurance within the financial sector is constantly increasing. Reasonably, after the events of the recent financial turmoil, the domain of research that examines the factors driving the risk-taking of this industry has been signified. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the interplay between national culture and risk of insurance firms. We quantify the cultural overtones, measuring national culture considering the dimensions outlined by the Hofstede model and risk-taking using the ‘Z-score’. In a sample consisting of 801 life and non-life insurance firms operating across 42 countries over the period 2007–2016, we find a strong and significant relationship among insurance firms' risk-taking and cultural characteristics, such as individualism, uncertainty avoidance and power distance. Results remain robust to a variety of firm and country-specific controls, alternative measures of risk, sample specifications and tests designed to alleviate endogeneity.

Stock price synchronicity has been associated with various market outcomes like the return-sentiment relations, stock liquidity, and asset pricing models. Therefore, researchers have devoted a lot of time in revealing the underlying factors that drive stock price synchronicity. Using a sample of 49 countries over the period 1990 to 2019 we find a robust association between higher cultural secretiveness and stock price synchronicity. Our results suggest that a deep-rooted country characteristic like the culture of secrecy can diminish the information environment of stock markets. The results are robust to the use of various control variables suggested in earlier studies and alternative regression techniques, including ones that address endogeneity concerns.

We introduce an application of the SMAA-Fuzzy-FlowSort approach to the case of modelling bank credit ratings. Its stochastic nature allows for imprecisions and uncertainty that naturally surround a decision-making exercise to be embedded into the proposed framework, whilst its output complements the ordinal nature of a crisp classification with cardinal information that shows the degree of membership to each rating category. Combined with the SMAA variant of GAIA that offers a visual of a bank’s judgmental analysis, both recent approaches provide a holistic multicriteria decision support tool in the hands of a credit analyst and enable a rich inferential procedure to be conducted. To illustrate the assets of this framework, we provide a case study evaluating the credit risk of 55 EU banks according to their financial fundamentals.

Using a sample of around 340 banks from 48 countries, we examine whether and how corporate governance moderates the relationship between monetary policy interest rates and bank stability. Our results show that low interest rates reduce bank stability and have an adverse effect on risk-adjusted returns, and risk-adjusted capitalization; however, this effect can be mitigated by a bank’s commitment and effectiveness towards following corporate governance principles. The results also show that high values of corporate governance can completely offset the low rates’ adverse effects. Our findings are robust to the use of bank fixed effects and numerous variables that control for bank-specific and country-specific characteristics.

In recent years, accelerator programs experienced substantial growth, becoming an important part of the entrepreneurial ecosystems around the world. New ventures that want to participate in such programs must go through a multi-stage and highly competitive process, with only one out of ten applicants being successful. However, our knowledge with regards to the factors that drive the decisions of accelerator programs is limited, and empirical research on this topic is scarce. We hypothesise that the national culture of the founding team can play an important role as a proxy for the unobservable values and the behaviour of the venture founders, and we examine the impact of cultural diversity on the probability of being admitted into an accelerator program. The results show that diversity enhances the probability of being selected. This finding is robust across several specifications, and while accounting for the potential endogeneity of cultural diversity.

The present study uses a sample of up to 356 banks from 50 countries over the period 2002–2017 to examine whether and how macroprudential policies and corporate governance interact in shaping bank risk. Our results show that the impact of bank corporate governance on risk-taking depends critically on the macroprudential policies in force. In more detail, bank corporate governance has a negative or insignificant impact on bank stability when none or only a few macroprudential policies are in place; however, the impact becomes positive and statistically significant as the number of macroprudential policies increases. These findings seem to be attributed to financial institutions targeted macroprudential instruments rather than borrowing targeted ones. The results are robust to the use of various indicators of risk and numerous additional tests.

Central banks play an important role in the economy. They are responsible for the conduct of monetary policy, and in several countries, they get involved in the supervision of the financial sector. We derive a simple theoretical model to illustrate how culture may influence a politician's choice of regulatory architecture and the assignment of responsibilities when anticipating the impact of that regime on the regulatory agencies’ incentives to cooperate. Using a sample of around 70 countries during the period 1996–2013 we confirm that the extent of supervisory duties that are allocated to the central bank are influenced by national culture. More specifically, consistent with the theoretical predictions, we find that individualism is positively associated, and power distance is negatively associated, with the likelihood of higher central bank involvement in supervision.

There are many studies in the finance and management literature that examine the impact of diversification on performance. Yet, the literature remains inconclusive as for the potential benefits in terms of risk and return. The present study aims to re-examine this issue, while proposing a methodological framework that integrates various bank performance and risk indicators into a single measure of financial strength. Using an international sample of commercial banks, we find that diversification in terms of income, earning assets, and on- and off-balance sheet activities influences positively their financial strength. We also find that income diversification can be more beneficial for banks operating in less developed countries compared to banks in advanced and major advanced economies. However, we observe the opposite in the case of diversification between off-balance sheet and on-balance sheet activities. Furthermore, the results reveal that income and earning assets diversification can mitigate the adverse effect of the financial crisis on bank financial strength. We continue to find a positive relationship between diversification and financial strength when we account for nesting effects, endogeneity, as well as when using an alternative approach for the construction of the financial strength indicator.

Over the last fifteen years, many countries introduced reforms into the supervisory architecture of their financial sector. However, there is no evidence on whether specific supervisory arrangements were more successful than others during the crisis. Empirical evidence on the topic is in general scarce and there are reasonable theoretical arguments for and against alternative approaches. Similarly, while the effect of central bank independence on price stability has attracted a lot of attention, our knowledge with regards to its effect on bank soundness remains limited. Using a large sample of commercial banks operating in various countries over the period 2000–2011, this paper investigates whether and how bank soundness is influenced by central bank independence, central bank involvement in prudential regulation, and supervisory unification. We find that central bank independence exercises a positive impact on bank soundness, which in the case of smaller banks is enhanced during the crisis. Supervisory unification and the central bank involvement appear to mitigate the adverse effects of the crisis. The power of the supervisory authorities and bank size also appear to be conditional factors.

International audience; Over the last decade, financial consumer protection policies have attracted a lot of attention among policy makers. However, empirical evidence on the impact of such policies on bank efficiency is nonexistent. At the same time, important differences on the instruments used to conduct prudential and financial consumer supervision do not permit the generalization of the findings of studies that focus on the former. The present study uses a sample of 2,413 banks from 79 countries to examine, for the first time in the literature, whether and if so how financial consumer protection policies influence bank profit efficiency around the globe. Considering policies related to disclosures to customers, fair treatment, dispute resolution, and the power of the financial consumer protection supervisory agency, our results show that more regulatory requirements decrease bank efficiency. The results are robust to various tests.

Summarization: This study examines the effect of regulations on European insurers’ profitability and risk-adjusted returns. We find an inverted U-shaped relationship between return on assets and regulations relating to capital adequacy, accounting and auditing requirements, and disclosures to supervisors. In contrast, requirements related to technical provisions have a negative effect on return on assets, and we find no evidence of an association with regulations related to investment and supervisory power. We also find evidence of an inverted U-shaped relationship between a firm's risk-adjusted rate of return and regulations relating to capital requirements as well as corporate governance and internal control. We observe the opposite in the case of technical provisions. These results are robust to controls for various country-specific attributes such as macroeconomic environment, stock market development, overall quality of institutions, and legal origins. Presented on: Journal of Financial Stability

Summarization: This paper investigates the relationship between the effective tax rate on bank income and bank profit efficiency. Our sample consists of 3,472 observations from 533 publicly quoted commercial banks operating in 46 countries between 2001 and 2009. We estimate a global frontier while controlling for various country-specific characteristics such as regulations, macroeconomic conditions, market concentration, and financial and overall development. The results indicate that a higher tax rate results in higher pre-tax profit efficiency. However, the relationship is non-linear, indicating that there is a point after which a further increase in taxation reduces bank profit efficiency. We also find that concentration in the banking sector enhances the effect of taxation on profit efficiency. Overall, the results provide some support to the tax-shifting hypothesis. However, there is no robust evidence that the impact of taxation on profit efficiency is influenced by the extent of private monitoring. Presented on: International Journal of the Economics of Business

The purpose of this study is to estimate and explain the performance of nonlife (i.e., property and casualty) insurers. The analysis consists of two stages. First, we propose the use of a multicriteria method to assess the condition of insurers while considering simultaneously a set of conflicting financial criteria. Then, we use regression analysis to examine the influence of firm-specific and country-specific attributes on the overall measure of performance obtained during the first stage. Macroeconomic conditions such as gross domestic product (GDP) growth, inflation, and income inequality are the most robust predictors of performance. However, other country-specific characteristics that relate to the institutional environment and financial or economic freedom do not appear to matter.

Summarization: In this study, we empirically investigate the relationship between financial and auditing requirements, capital requirements, official supervisory power, and the likelihood of receiving a qualified audit opinion. The sample consists of 71 qualified financial statements and 17,526 unqualified ones, from 3,642 banking institutions operating in 15 old and new EU countries over the period 1999–2006. The results indicate that financial and auditing requirements have a negative influence, while supervisory power has a positive impact, on the likelihood of qualified audit opinions. Concerning capital requirements, we find that only initial stringency has an impact on audit opinions. Presented on: Computational Economics

We investigate the determinants of commercial bank acquisitions in the former fifteen countries of the European Union by evaluating the impact of bank-specific measures, such as size, growth and efficiency of banks, and external influences reflecting industry level differences in the regulatory and supervision framework, market environment and economic conditions. Our empirical analysis involves multinomial logit estimation at various levels in order to identify those characteristics that most consistently predict targets and acquirers from a sample of over 1400 commercial banks. The overall results indicate that, relative to banks that were not involved in the acquisitions, (i) targets and acquirers were significantly larger, less well capitalized and less cost efficient, (ii) targets were less profitable with lower growth prospects, and acquirers more profitable with higher growth prospects, (iii) external factors have affected targets and acquirers differently, and their effects have not been consistent or robust to sample size changes. © 2011 New York University Salomon Center and Wiley Periodicals, Inc..

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the stock performance of EU listed banks is related to their efficiency. Our sample consists of 171 banks operating in 15 EU markets over the period 2002–2006. First, we use stochastic frontier analysis to estimate the cost and profit efficiency of banks, while controlling for environmental factors. Then, we investigate if changes in profit and cost efficiency are reflected in changes in stock prices. Our results indicate that the change in profit efficiency has a positive and significant impact on stocks prices; however, there is no relationship between changes in cost efficiency and stock returns.

The purpose of the present study is the development of classification models for the identification of acquirers and targets in the Asian banking sector. We use a sample of 52 targets and 47 acquirers that were involved in acquisitions in 9 Asian banking markets during 1998–2004 and match them by country and time with an equal number of non-involved banks. The models are developed and validated through a tenfold cross-validation approach using two multicriteria decision aid techniques. For comparison purposes we also develop models through discriminant analysis. The results indicate that the multicriteria decision aid models are more efficient that the ones developed through discriminant analysis. Furthermore, in all the cases the models are more efficient in distinguishing between acquirers and non-involved banks than between targets and non-involved banks. Finally, the models with a binary outcome achieve higher accuracies than the ones which simultaneously distinguish between acquirers, targets and non-involved banks.

Banking crises can be damaging for the economy, and as the recent experience has shown, nowadays they can spread rapidly across the globe with contagious effects. Therefore, the assessment of the stability of a county’s banking sector is important for regulators, depositors, investors and the general public. In the present study, we propose the development of classification models that assign the banking sectors of various countries in three classes, labelled “low stability”, “medium stability”, and “high stability”. The models are developed using three multicriteria decision aid techniques, which are well-suited to ordinal classification problems. We use a sample of 114 banking sectors (i.e., countries), and a set of criteria that includes indicators of the macroeconomic, institutional and regulatory environment, as well as basic characteristics of the banking and financial sector. The models are developed and tested using a tenfold cross-validation approach and they are benchmarked against models developed with discriminant analysis and logistic regression.

Summarization: We use a sample of acquired and non-acquired commercial banks from the principal EU markets and logistic regression analysis to investigate the relationship between bank characteristics and the likelihood to be acquired. The results indicate the existence of differences across countries either in terms of the significance of the variables or the sign of their coefficients. Presented on: Applied Economics Letters

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the efficiency and productivity of a Greek bank's branches.Design/methodology/approachThe sample consists of 458 branches of a Greek commercial bank, operating in 13 regions of Greece over the period 2002‐2005, a total of 1,795 observations. Data envelopment analysis was used to explore the efficiency and productivity of the branches. Then, fixed and random effects models were used to determine the impact of internal and external factors on the efficiency and productivity scores.FindingsThe results indicate that the branches in the sample could have achieved improved overall performance during 2002‐2005. Also, that the inclusion of loan loss provisions as an input variable increases the efficiency score, but for the total factor productivity (TFP) change, the results are mixed. The second stage regressions indicate that both the logarithm of personnel and the logarithm of income per capita in the local market have a significant impact on efficiency, while the loans to total assets ratio has a significant impact on pure technical efficiency only. When the various productivity change measures were regressed over the explanatory variables, it was found that the logarithm of per capita gross fixed capital formation has a positive and statistically significant impact on all measures. Also, that the return on assets, the loans to deposit ratio, the logarithm of personnel, and the logarithm of income of per capita, all have a positive and statistically significant impact on overall efficiency change.Originality/valueThis paper is the first study on Greek branches which examines the impact of market conditions. It examines the impact of risk‐taking on the efficiency of the branches and examines the productivity growth of the branch network using the Malmquist TFP index.

All UK companies are required by company law to prepare financial statements that must comply with law and accounting standards. With the exception of very small companies, financial accounts must then be audited by UK registered auditors who must express an opinion on whether these statements are free from material misstatements, and have been prepared in accordance with legislation and relevant accounting standards (unqualified opinion) or not (qualified opinion). The objective of the present study is to explore the potentials of developing multicriteria decision aid models for reproducing, as accurately as possible, the auditors’ opinion on the financial statements of the firms. A sample of 625 company audited years with qualified statements and 625 ones with unqualified financial statements over the period 1998–2003 from 823 manufacturing private and public companies is being used in contrast to most of the previous works in the UK that have mainly focused on very small or very large public companies. Furthermore, the models are being developed and tested using the walk-forward approach as opposed to previous studies that employ simple holdout tests or resampling techniques. Discriminant analysis and logit analysis are also used for comparison purposes. The out-of-time and out-of-sample testing results indicate that the two multicriteria decision aid techniques achieve almost equal classification accuracies and are both more efficient than discriminant and logit analysis.

Summarization: This study examines the financial characteristics of 52 targets and 47 acquirers that were involved in acquisitions in the Asian commercial banking sector over the period 1998 to 2004 and a control sample of non-merged banks matched by country and year. Three logistic regression models are estimated to determine the factors that influence the probability of being involved in an acquisition either as a target or as an acquirer. The results indicate that more asset risky portfolios increase this probability. Higher liquidity also increases the probability of being acquired. The probability of being involved in an acquisition as acquirer also increases with size and cost efficiency. Finally, more profitable banks are more likely to be involved in acquisitions as acquirers rather than as targets. When we partition our sample in two sub-periods we find that only the higher loan loss provisions of targets and the higher size of acquirers remain robust over time. Presented on: Applied Financial Economics

We link genetic diversity in the country of origin of the firms’ board members with corporate performance via board members’ nationality. We hypothesize that our approach captures deep-rooted differences in cultural, institutional, social, psychological, physiological, and other traits that cannot be captured by other recently measured indices of diversity. Using a panel of firms listed in the North American and UK stock markets, we find that adding board directors from countries with different levels of genetic diversity (either higher or lower) increases firm performance. This effect prevails when we control for a number of cultural, institutional, firm-level, and board member characteristics, as well as for the nationality of the board of directors. To identify the relationship, we use—as instrumental variables for our diversity indices—the migratory distance from East Africa and the level of ultraviolet exposure in the directors’ country of nationality. This paper was accepted by Wei Jiang, finance.

Summarization: In this paper, we use a sample of 894 banks from 79 countries to develop a multicriteria decision aid model, for the classification of banks into three groups on the basis of their soundness. The model is developed with the UTilités Additives DIScriminantes (UTADIS) method, through a 10-fold cross-validation procedure using six financial and four non-financial variables. The ratings of Fitch form the basis for assigning banks into the three groups. The results indicate that the asset quality (as measured by loan loss provisions), capitalization, and the market where banks operate are the most important criteria (in terms of weights) in classifying the banks. Profitability and efficiency in expenses management are also important attributes, whereas size and listing in a stock exchange are the least important ones. UTADIS achieves higher classification accuracies than discriminant analysis and ordinary logistic regression which are used for benchmarking purposes. Παρουσιάστηκε στο: Journal of Multi- Criteria Decision Analysis

The verification of whether the financial statements of a firm represent its actual position is of major importance for auditors, who should provide a qualified report if they conclude that the financial statements fail to meet this requirement. This paper implements support vector machines (SVMs) to develop models that may support auditors in this task. Linear and non-linear models are developed and their performance is analysed using training samples of different size and out-of-sample/out-of-time data. The results show that all SVM models are capable of distinguishing between qualified and unqualified financial statements with satisfactory accuracy. The performance of the models over time is also explored. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

International audience; This study was undertaken on the basis of reports from international research literature, which indicates that although investments in innovation have a higher return, compared to conventional investments, any relevant information concerning those investments is not distinctly (or clearly) reported on financial statements. The absence of information regarding such investments underlines the inadequacy of financial reporting. In fact, the apparent substitution of official financial statements for other unofficial documents, perhaps even derived from unsafe sources, indicates the negative effects this absence causes on market efficiency. The consequence could be more serious to those investors that are not in the position to seek and use alternative information sources, efficiently. The purpose of this study is to investigate the efficiency of the Electre Tri method in developing models for identifying innovative firms.

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in microfinance institutions (MFIs). Some studies assess the financial condition of MFIs on the basis of individual criteria while a few others attempt to explain differences in profitability on the basis of firm-level attributes and country-level characteristics. However, there is no widely accepted measure for assessing the performance of MFIs. The present study employs a two stage analysis. In the first stage, I propose the use of the PROMETHEE II multicriteria method. This allows the evaluation of the overall performance of the MFIs. In the second stage of the analysis, I use regression analysis to explain differences in the overall performance of the MFIs on the basis of various country-specific characteristics. The results show that the size of the MFIs has a robust non-linear, inverted U-shaped impact on overall performance. Age and the status of non-governmental institution also appear to matter. As it concerns the country-level attributes, GDP growth has a robust positive impact on overall performance. Regional differences also appear to matter.

This paper investigates the role of technical reserves in the income smoothing behavior of insurance companies. This is one of the first attempts in the literature to trace such relationship in the insurance industry, especially at a multi-country setting. The experience of 770 insurance firms operating in 87 countries over the period 2000-2009 reveals that there is a significant evidence of income smoothing. The paper also finds that institutional characteristics, e.g., the rule of law, common law legal origin, economic freedom, and regulations relating to technical provisions and supervisory power constrain income smoothing but other factors such as capital requirements, tax deductibility of provisions, auditing, and corporate governance do not have a significant effect.

This study presents the first attempt to develop classification models for the prediction of share repurchases using multicriteria decision aid (MCDA) methods. The MCDA models are developed using two methods namely UTilites Additives DIScriminantes (UTADIS) and ELimination and Choice Expressing REality (ELECTRE) TRI, through a ten-fold cross-validation approach. The sample consists of 1060 firms from France, Germany and the UK. We find that both MCDA models achieve quite satisfactory classification accuracies in the validation sample and they outperform both logistic regression and chance predictions.

This book is divided into four major parts, each covering different aspects of financial engineering and modeling such as portfolio management and trading, risk management, applications of operation research methods, and credit rating ...

Summarization: Over recent decades, the forecasting and prediction of stock market acquisitions have been subject to increased interest due to the economic importance for various stakeholders. This study consists of two stages: dealing with the development of prediction models and their subsequent use within an investment strategy. During the first stage, we explore the ability to predict the acquisition of listed firms in the UK. In the second stage of the analysis, we explore whether it is possible to earn abnormal returns by investing in portfolios consisted of the predicted targets. The training sample includes 658 listed companies half of which were acquired between 2001 and 2005. The validation sample consists of 1,576 listed firms, of which 416 were acquired during 2006. The results indicate that the portfolios can generate abnormal returns of up to 4.78% depending on the investment horizon and the methodology employed. Presented on: International Journal of Banking, Accounting and Finance

Summarization: We develop classification models that could assist auditors during the examination of firms operating in the public services sector. The sample consists of 228 firms from the Health and Social work and the Education UK sectors. The models, both sector-specific and general ones, are developed with discriminant and logit analysis through a 10-fold cross-validation procedure. The models achieve a satisfactory accuracy in classifying financial statements as qualified or unqualified. The variables that are important across all models are the logarithm of total assets, the return on capital employed, and whether the auditor is one of the big four or not. Presented on: International Journal of Accounting, Auditing and Performance Evaluation