Purpose -The aim of this paper is to examine empirically the managerial earnings management practices of financially distressed firms, and to consider whether these practices changed during the recent global financial crisis. Although corporate distress has been a topic of research interest for many years, earnings manipulation by distressed firms has received relatively little attention. Design/methodology/approach -The paper uses three measures of distress, and discretionary accruals, a popular proxy for earnings management, to investigate the impact of distress on earnings management. Findings -The paper finds that managers of distressed firms engage more in income-decreasing earnings management practices compared to their healthy firm counterparts. The paper also finds some evidence of the effect of the global financial crisis on the association between financial distress and earnings management. Finally, the paper shows some evidence of positive market pricing of discretionary accruals in the non-crisis period, but a substantial reduction in pricing coefficients during the global financial crisis period. Practical implications -Financial distress experienced by firms provides incentives to managers for earnings manipulation. However, the direction of the earnings management could be income-increasing or income-decreasing. The findings from this study will allow investors to make better investment decisions for firms that are experiencing financial difficulties. Originality/value -This paper is the first in New Zealand to investigate the association between firm distress and managerial earnings management decisions. Recently, New Zealand experienced a spate of finance company collapses that somewhat contributes, indirectly, to financial distress experienced by firms. The New Zealand reporting environment is characterized by concentrated ownership, relaxed monitoring by regulatory authorities, and a very low litigation threat that provides an interesting setting to examine the research question. This paper is also the first to test the market pricing of earnings components in New Zealand.
This paper provides a meta‐analysis of the determinants of audit report lag, defined as the period between a company's fiscal year end and the audit report date. We group the meta‐analyzed studies into three categories: (a) audit and audit‐related determinants, (b) corporate governance‐related determinants, and (c) firm‐specific determinants. We find that audit opinion and audit season variables increase audit report lag, whereas Big 4 affiliation, nonaudit services, and auditor tenure decrease audit report lag. Among the corporate governance determinants, the existence of a financial expert member on an audit committee, and ownership concentration, reduce audit report lag. Finally, an examination of firm‐level characteristics reveals that firm complexity increases audit report lag, whereas profitability reduces it. We employ a meta‐regression technique and identify publication bias. Although we find some evidence of journal quality as a contributor to publication bias, the extent of publication bias from this source is small.
We synthesise the empirical literature on the determinants and consequences of financial distress, critique the findings and offer suggestions for future research. We categorise these indicators into (i) firm-level fundamental determinants, (ii) macroeconomic determinants and (iii) firm-level corporate governance determinants. We categorise the consequences into (i) financial reporting and auditing consequences, (ii) firm-level operational consequences, (iii) capital market consequences and (iv) corporate governance consequences. We suggest that future research can make a more meaningful contribution, by developing more comprehensive models of predicting financial distress which will entail a departure from the current partial analysis to a more holistic complex analysis.
Purpose This paper aims to investigate the association between the corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the cost of equity (COE) and cost of debt (COD). Design/methodology/approach The authors use the multivariate regression analysis approach to address the developed hypotheses. Findings Using a sample of 230 Australian listed firms from 2004 to 2016, the authors document that firms complying with higher CSR affect both COE and COD negatively, which means that CSR disclosure reduces financing cost. Practical implication These results support the risk mitigation perspective of CSR compliance, showing that both the investors and creditors may lower their expected returns because they find that CSR can mitigate potential business risk. Originality/value The authors extend the CSR research with both COE and COD.
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