In recent years, many initial coin offerings (ICOs) scams have been reported, attracting attention to this relatively new and unregulated ICO market, which lacks disclosure requirements and therefore suffers from intensifying problems of information asymmetry inherent in crowdfunding. As a prospectus-type document, an ICO white paper serves as a major means of voluntary disclosure practices adopted by ventures seeking external financing. Given the importance of an ICO white paper and the difficulty of assessing its quality, we propose to benchmark it against white paper content for security token offerings (STOs)-a more regulated ICO subset. Using the similarity of ICO white papers with STO white papers to proxy for disclosure quality, we document that the ICO campaigns that have white papers more similar to STO white papers are more likely to raise funding successfully. Our findings provide implications for policymakers, ICO fundraisers, and investors on the importance of white paper quality.
Geographic information may be used in audit tasks, such as identifying high-risk cases involving suspicious entities usually located close to each other. However, the existing approach of text string analysis on addresses may only be able to match companies located in the same city or street. Following a design science approach, we propose using the geographic proximity of two locations to address how utilizing different levels of geographic information could improve the effectiveness and efficiency in auditing and other business tasks. As a proof of concept, we used Python and Google API to build Geographic Information in Audit Analytics (GIAA), a tool for automatically collecting, generating, and outputting spherical distance information indicating geographic proximity. We used a bid-rigging case to demonstrate GIAA and perform qualitative and quantitative evaluations. This study addresses how auditors and others can benefit from more advanced levels of geographic information, supporting better judgment and decision making.
This article investigates the transfer of information security breach information between breached firms and their peers. Using a large data set of information security incidents from 2003 to 2013, the results suggest that 1) the effect of information security breach information transfer exists between breached firms and non-breached firms that offer similar products and 2) the effect of information transfer is weaker when the information security breach is due to internal faults or is related to the loss of personally identifiable information. Additional tests demonstrate that the effect of information transfer exhibits consistent patterns across time and with different types of information security breaches. Finally, the effect does not depend on whether the firms are IT intensive. Implications, limitations, and future research are discussed.
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