Accounting Disclosure Quality Research Articles

Integrated Reporting and IFRS 3: an empirical study to Cost of Equity through Firm Risk and Investor Protection

This study examines the relation of cost of equity associated with the disclosure quality of IFRS 3 and the Integrated Reporting (IR) compliance. Employing an IR sample composed of 498 non-financial firms that use IR either mandatorily or voluntarily from 2011 to 2019, we investigate the impact of IR and IFRS 3 disclosure quality on the cost of equity. Based on Breuer et al. (2018) and Chava (2014) we suggest two distinct channels through which IR and IFRS 3 can influence the cost of equity: firm risk and investor base. In companies with strong legal, cultural, and political factors, our results show that the cost of equity falls when a firm invests in IR and at the same time provides high levels of IFRS 3 information. Moreover, we find that higher IFRS 3 disclosure score lowers firms’ risk in companies with high IR compliance. We interpret the negative relation at higher levels of disclosure as evidence that investors consider firms with low levels of IR informativeness to be riskier. Finally, we find that the negative impact of IFRS 3 disclosure quality and of IR compliance to cost of equity is more intense when firms’ risk is low.
 
 JEL Classification: C 33; G17; G32; L2; M14.
 Keywords: integrated reporting, IFRS 3, accounting disclosure quality, cost of equity, firm risk and investor protection

Research on the Impact of Corporate Governance on the Quality of Accounting Disclosure

Research on the Impact of Corporate Governance on the Quality of Accounting Disclosure

Relationship between the Size of Accounting Firm and the Quality of Carbon Accounting Information Disclosure——The Case of Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies in heavy pollution industry in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region

The quality of carbon accounting disclosure has attracted much attention as carbon neutrality and carbon peaking targets were mentioned in the general debate of the United Nations General Assembly in 2020. As the world's largest country of Carbon Emission, China lacks research related to the size of accounting firms and the quality of carbon accounting disclosure. This paper establishes an evaluation system of carbon accounting information disclosure quality from the perspective of accounting information quality characteristics, selects Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies in Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei regions in 2021 as the research sample, and compares carbon accounting information disclosure quality of listed companies audited by accounting firms of varying sizes from each characteristic dimension of accounting information quality characteristics, and lastly a comprehensive comparison and one-way ANOVA were conducted to explore the relationship between the size of accounting firms and the quality of carbon accounting information disclosure of listed companies in the heavy pollution industry as a whole. The research results indicate that the reliability, timeliness, understandability, and integrity of carbon accounting information of listed companies audited by larger accounting firms are better, but comparability and relevance are not significantly related to accounting firm size; overall, the larger accounting firms correspond to higher quality of carbon accounting information disclosure of listed companies in heavy pollution industries. Based on the research results, this paper puts forward relevant suggestions at three levels: accounting firms, the state, and enterprises, to improve the quality of carbon accounting information disclosure of listed companies, and then to promote the carbon emission reduction work of enterprises, thereby facilitating the achievement of "dual carbon" objectives.

Apakah Perekayasaan Laba Dipengaruhi oleh Akuntansi Lingkungan, Kapitalisasi Pasar, dan Asimetri Informasi?

This study aims to examine the effect of the quality of environmental accounting disclosures, good corporate governance, and information asymmetry on the level of discretionary accruals. The specific target of this research is to empirically examine the effect of the quality of environmental accounting disclosures, good corporate governance, and information asymmetry on the level of discretionary accruals. The population of this research is all mining sector companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange for the 2016-2020 period as many as 47 companies. Determination of the sample was selected based on the Slovin method and purposive sampling criteria with a quantitative descriptive approach. This study uses secondary data from company financial reports, company annual reports and sustainability reports. Data analysis was performed using multiple linear regression analysis using SPSS version 26.0. By using multiple linear regression analysis as a research method, the results show that partially the quality of environmental accounting disclosures, good corporate governance, and information asymmetry have a significant effect on the level of discretionary accruals. Furthermore, based on the results of simultaneous testing, it is found that the quality of environmental accounting disclosures, good corporate governance, and information asymmetry together have a significant effect on the level of company discretionary accruals.

The relation between CEO equity incentives and the quality of accounting disclosures: New evidence

This paper provides new evidence on the negative relation between CEO equity incentives and accounting disclosure quality. We analyze a comprehensive set of disclosure quality variables, including discretionary accruals quality, the quantity and quality of voluntary disclosures, fineness of reported financial statement information, and the narrative quality of regulatory filings, and use them to create information disclosure quality indices. We address the potential endogeneity of CEO equity incentives by conducting two-stage least squares/IV models and natural experiments created by situations in which there is an exogenous shock to the use or value of CEO stock options. Our results are robust to subsample analyses and to alternative measures of the incentives created by CEO options.

Corporate Governance Structure and Accounting Information Disclosure Quality: Evidence from Shenzhen Stock Exchange in China

This study investigates the effect of corporate governance structure on the quality of accounting information disclosure using Shenzhen stock exchange data. Existing literatures reported that corporate governance can help to improve accounting quality. However, China's corporate governance structure may have different consequences from prior studies because it has less maturity than developed countries in Europe and the United States. China government, in particular, has a very strong influence on the companies in China and we needs to be verified if the corporate governance structure works properly. From the empirical tests, we find that the proportion of stateowned shares, the proportion of tradable shares, ownership concentration, the size of the board of directors, the proportion of ownership of the board of directors, and size of the board of supervisors are positively associated with the quality of accounting information disclosure. This study will contribute to academics and practitioners by documenting the factors of corporate governance structure on accounting disclosure quality in China.

Corporate Governance Structure and Accounting Information Disclosure Quality: Evidence from Shenzhen Stock Exchange in China

This study investigates the effect of corporate governance structure on the quality of accounting information disclosure using Shenzhen stock exchange data. Existing literatures reported that corporate governance can help to improve accounting quality. However, China's corporate governance structure may have different consequences from prior studies because it has less maturity than developed countries in Europe and the United States. China government, in particular, has a very strong influence on the companies in China and we needs to be verified if the corporate governance structure works properly. From the empirical tests, we find that the proportion of stateowned shares, the proportion of tradable shares, ownership concentration, the size of the board of directors, the proportion of ownership of the board of directors, and size of the board of supervisors are positively associated with the quality of accounting information disclosure. This study will contribute to academics and practitioners by documenting the factors of corporate governance structure on accounting disclosure quality in China.

Assessing the moderating effect of Shariah Board on the relationship between financial performance and accounting disclosure

PurposeShariah Board (SB) is considered as a typical corporate governance mechanism for the Islamic banking system. This board takes the responsibilities of assuring the compliance of transactions and operations with Islamic rules and principles. The purpose of this paper is to measure the SB quality and examine its moderating effect on the relationship between financial performance and accounting disclosure quality.Design/methodology/approachThis study used a sample of 90 Islamic banks (IBs) during the period 2010-2014. The accounting disclosure quality and the SB quality were measured using self-developed indices. The moderating effect of the SB on the performance/disclosure relationship was examined using the hierarchical regression analysis.FindingsThe main finding of this study is related to the negative moderating effect of SB quality on the relationship between performance and disclosure. Accordingly, it can be said that the higher the quality of the SB is, the lesser the performance affects the disclosure. This result seems to indicate that at high level of SB quality, even when the performance decreases, the IBs engage in complying with accounting disclosure requirements in order to inform the stakeholders on the real situation of the bank.Research limitations/implicationsThe finding of this study would be of great support to stakeholders and policy makers to make more pressure on IBs to improve the quality of their SB structure and show more compliance with the governance recommendations. As an extension to this study, further research can examine other Islamic governance mechanisms, such as the Internal Shariah Review.Originality/valueTo the authors’ knowledge, there has been a dearth of studies dealing with the empirical examination of the moderating impact of the SB quality on the association between the financial performance and the disclosure quality. Therefore, this study could be considered a tentative contribution to the literature by providing some empirical evidence on the links between these three variables using the moderation regression analysis.

How narrative reporting changed the business world: providing a new measurement tool

Research on the quality of the narrative portion of the annual report has long been hampered by a lack of tools that permit an objective analysis of qualitative disclosure. This study is the first piece of accounting disclosure quality research which proposes a comprehensive index that uses Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to enhance understanding of the quality of narrative information disclosure in a very important transitional period of 2002 to 2007. Our results show that after the adoption of IFRS, the level of narrative disclosure compliance with the IASB’s Management Commentary Framework (MCF) is medium, ranging from 8% to 75%, averaging 53% and this shows that there is much room for improvement with respect to the financial statements. Thus, despite the continued demand for better comparability in financial reporting practices, in our sample, a large number of firms do not seem to converge toward a single set of standards for both the narrative and financial disclosure. On the other hand, the region forced to comply with mandatory requirements (e.g., the US) will not provide a greater amount of disclosure information in their MCF reporting than the regions that are not required to comply with these disclosure guidelines (e.g., Western Europe and Northern Europe)

Adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in Ghana and the Quality of Financial Statement Disclosures

According to the IASB's IFRS framework, qualitative characteristics are the attributes that make the information provided in financial statements useful to others. This study was conducted to investigate the quality of financial reports before and after adopting IFRSs in Ghana, and also the influence of firm-specific characteristics which include firm size, profitability, debt equity ratio, liquidity and audit firm size on the quality of financial information disclosed by firms listed on the Ghana Stock Exchange.The research was conducted through detailed analysis of the pre-official adoption period, (2006) and post adoption period, (2008) financial statements of the listed firms. Descriptive analysis was performed to provide the background statistics of the variables examined. This was followed by regression analysis which forms the main data analysis. The results of the quality of financial information disclosure mean of 76.80% (pre adoption) and 87.09% (post adoption) for the two years indicate that the quality of financial reports has improved significantly after adopting IFRSs. The study thus confirms that the implementation of IFRSs generally reinforce accounting disclosure quality. It also indicates listed firms' overwhelming compliance with the IASB's IFRS Framework.The results of the multiple regression analysis show that company size, represented by net assets and Auditor type were found to be associated at a statistically significant level with the quality of financial information disclosed. With the improvement in the quality of the financial reports after adopting IFRS users are assured of useful information for financial decision-making.Keywords: Quality of financial reports' disclosure, Firm-specific characteristics, International Financial Reporting Standards, Mandatory disclosure, Ghana. JEL Classifications: M40, M41, M48

Target Price Accuracy: International Evidence

ABSTRACTUsing an international sample of 16 countries, this paper examines if analyst- and country-specific characteristics explain the variation in target price (TP) accuracy. We find that significant variation in average TP accuracy across countries is due to differences in accounting disclosure quality, the origin of the legal system, cultural traits, and IFRS regulation. We also find that analysts exhibit differential and persistent ability to forecast target prices accurately, which confirms that some analysts have superior TP forecasting ability.Data Availability: Data are available from public sources indicated in the text.

Accounting Disclosure Quality And Bankruptcy Prediction

The complexity of economic environment and information asymmetry makes financial reporting and accounting disclosure policies crucial to stakeholders, hence the role of accounting disclosure quality in bankruptcy prediction realm has been investigated in this study. The Result of Genetic algorithm show that accounting disclosure quality significantly increases the accuracy of bankruptcy prediction model and it can be regarded as a complementary variable to other variables used in the bankruptcy literature. To examine the research hypotheses, the listed Companies of Tehran Stock Exchange have been investigated between 2004 and 2010.

Accounting disclosure quality, capital market intensity and national productivity

This paper reports results through the use of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to examine the effect of accounting disclosure quality on national productivity in two stages. In stage I, we adopt the framework of Kumar and Russell’s tripartite decomposition of productivity growth to estimate national productivity growth and its three underlying components, namely efficiency change, technical progress, and physical capital accumulation. In stage II, we regress national productivity growth and its three components against the interaction of accounting disclose quality and capital market intensity. In our empirical analysis we use data from 33 countries over the period 1985–2002. The results indicate that (1) the accumulation of physical capital is the primary driver of national productivity growth, and (2) the accounting disclosure quality affects national productivity through its effect on physical capital accumulation in countries with high capital market intensity. Overall, our results indicate that for those nations whose GDP relies heavily on capital markets, higher accounting disclosure quality stimulates higher level of physical capital, which, in turn, leads to higher national productivity.

Target Price Accuracy: International Evidence

Using an international sample of 16 countries, this paper examines if analyst- and country-specific characteristics explain the variation in target price (TP) accuracy. We find significant variation in average TP accuracy across countries that is due to differences in accounting disclosure quality, the origin of the legal system, cultural traits and IFRS regulation. We also find that analysts exhibit differential and persistent ability to forecast target prices accurately, which confirms that some analysts have superior TP forecasting ability.

Accounting Disclosure Quality, Cost of Capital and Interrelated Firm Effect

In this paper I investigate the relation between disclosure quality and cost of capital by adding interrelated firm effect. Previous studies suggest that disclosure quality monotonically reduces cost of capital if a firm has a constant investment level, as if it is in a pure exchange economy. Nevertheless this study shows that this notion is not always valid: the relation between disclosure quality and cost of capital is more subtle than it apparently thought. I demonstrate that in a production-based economy disclosure quality has both an informational effect and a production effect on a firm’s cost of capital. Given a positive correlation between two firms, the informational and the production effect invariably affect a disclosing firm’s cost of capital in opposite ways. Therefore there is an implicit endogenous trade-off of disclosure quality. Even when disclosures do not change a disclosing firm’s own investment decisions or its own distribution of future cash flows, there are possibilities that disclosure quality affect the firm’s cost of capital in a detrimental way where interrelated firms are priced in a capital market that values diversification.

Manager’s Perception of the Importance of Environmental Accounting and its Effect on the Quality of Corporate Environmental Accounting Disclosures: Case from Indonesia

The purpose of this study is to compare perceptions of managers in Indonesia concerning environmental accounting disclosure with actual environmental accounting disclosure. The value of this research is making an original contribution to develop instrument in exploring managerial perception of environmental accounting disclosure. Samples for this study are corporate managerial from listing companies in the Jakarta Stock Exchange and also annual report companies. This research has developed strategies to measure managerial perceptions of environmental accounting disclosure. Mail surveys design used on this study. Analysis used for testing relationship between managerial perception and environmental accounting disclosure is simple regression test. The dependent sample variable data is the latest data published in Jakarta Stock Exchange. This study finds a positive correlation between managerial perception of environmental accounting disclosure and actual environmental accounting disclosure. This result shows that disclosure quality and several legal sanctions in environmental aspects could be empowerment of regulator pasties to force managers to maintain their pollution and reported their activity also in their annual report. In hence, legitimacy theory is used as an explanation for corporate reactions to threats to its legitimacy vis-á-vis the social contract, while legitimacy theory infers motivation to incorporate environmental accounting disclosure.

Accounting Disclosure Quality, Cost of Capital and Interrelated Firm Effect in Different Economies

Accounting Disclosure Quality, Cost of Capital and Interrelated Firm Effect in Different Economies

Guilt by Association? Creditor Rights and Industry Effects on Loan Terms

This study examines the role of the borrower’s industry for loan terms in regimes with varying strength of creditor rights, efficiency of debt enforcement, and other institutional characteristics. We argue that the extent of borrower-lender agency conflicts affecting loan repayment will vary with the borrower’s industry, holding borrower-level characteristics constant. Therefore, in weak creditor rights environments the expropriation of creditors is both severe and is more heavily influenced by aggregate factors. As a result, in weak creditor rights regimes, lenders are going to be less willing to gather costly information about borrower-specific risk and more likely to use industry factors in setting loan spreads. The alternative hypothesis is that collection of firm-specific private information becomes increasingly important when creditors face significant agency conflicts and expropriation risks, resulting in more discriminate loan pricing, all else equal. Empirically, industry factors have a larger impact on loan spreads in countries with fewer creditor rights protections and weaker enforcement of creditor rights. The creditor rights effect is partially mitigated during high volatility periods associated with a greater aggregate level of uncertainty. When included jointly with other institutional characteristics, the effects of creditor rights and accounting disclosure quality dominate insider agency conflicts and government expropriation. The main result is also observed for loan size, indicating that the relevance of industry for the quantity, and not only the pricing, of bank loans depends on the creditor rights environment. We corroborate the identified patterns in the role of industry factors for loan pricing using US data on state variation in creditor protections. The findings have important implications for prospective borrowers whose cost of bank debt will be more affected by industry peers in poor creditor rights environments.