This paper examines the effect of female directors on corporate debt maturity structures. We find that firms with a higher ratio of female directors tend to have a larger proportion of short‐maturity debt. This effect is more pronounced with female independent directors and is insignificant with female inside directors. These findings remain robust under propensity score matching and instrumental variable approaches to address potential endogeneity concerns. Furthermore, we find that our results are driven primarily by firms with weak governance quality and low financial constraints. We also find that the effect does not differ between high‐ and low‐leveraged firms, and there is a negative relation between female directors and likelihood of overinvestment. This evidence suggests that female directors view short‐term debt as a monitoring device.
Using enforcement actions by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as a proxy for noncompliance with securities regulations, we examine whether a firm's compliance with non-accounting laws and regulations is associated with GAAP violations. We find that firms that violate securities regulations related to non-accounting issues are more likely to report accounting restatements than control firms that comply with securities regulations. We also find that the difference between the two groups is significant only for the periods subsequent to the start of the noncompliance period but not for periods prior to this date. Our results highlight the interrelation between the accounting and compliance systems, and suggest that managers who are non-compliant with non-accounting regulations are also more likely to be non-compliant with accounting rules. K E Y W O R D Scompliance, GAAP violations, noncompliance with securities regulations, SEC's enforcement actions 1 Accounting Principles (GAAP) to draw inferences about the interrelation between these two important aspects of noncompliance behavior. We posit that managers who are non-compliant with non-accounting regulations are also more likely to be non-compliant with accounting rules.The reasons why we expect a correlation between noncompliance with non-accounting regulations and GAAP violations are as follows. First, a firm's accounting and compliance systems are built on common aspects of its internal culture, reflecting elements such as integrity, ethical values, and tone at the top. We expect that a firm's underlying compliance culture is likely to influence noncompliance with securities regulations and GAAP violations. Second, accounting and non-accounting compliance are interrelated because of the accounting system's core function of recording economic activities. Since noncompliance with laws and regulations typically involves misrepresentation of economic reality including performance and value, this type of wrongdoing could be reflected in (or facilitated by) the accounting system. For example, a manager motivated to mislead investors would likely violate both GAAP and non-GAAP rules and regulations. In these cases, GAAP violations may be a natural consequence of the more primitive decision to violate securities regulations. Third, firm-level compliance with securities regulations and accounting rules are determined by the quality of prevailing internal controls that are designed to achieve related objectives, including ensuring compliance with financial reporting rules, ensuring the effectiveness and efficiency of operations, and ensuring compliance with applicable laws and regulations (Committee of Sponsoring Organisations, 2013). Specifically, accounting and compliance are affected by common characteristics of the firm's internal control system such as resource constraints, management competence, and communication effectiveness. For example, fewer resources invested in internal control would likely adversely affect both securities regulation compliance a...
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