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When financial statements are public, the choice between alternative reporting regimes constitutes a signal that addresses external stakeholders. Generally, the choice of more complex regimes acts as a complement of firms' transparency. However, in the absence of audits, opportunistic behaviors could be incentivized. This study aims to test whether SMEs' choice between alternative accounting regimes is associated with earnings quality.

Drawing on the literature about accounting choices and earnings quality, this study investigates whether the same conclusions are confirmed for SMEs. Using a sample of 4,054 Italian companies and 12,114 observations, it compared four earnings quality proxies of a group of companies that opted for the “Full” rules and those of a subsample of the population of companies that applied the Simplified rules.

The results suggest that the signaling power of accounting rules' choice could lead to wrong conclusions for SMEs. Indeed, a positive relationship emerged (H1) between the choice of the “Full” rules and income smoothing behaviors, while the same choice appears to reduce the probability to disclose SPOS. Moreover, the results suggest that opportunistic behaviors are more frequent for firms that have settled in a “non-cooperative” social environment (H2).

This study could foster research on financial reporting quality in private firms.

Comparing the quality of financial statements drawn up according to two alternative accounting regimes could provide useful suggestions for both users and regulators.

The results contribute to the limited literature on the implications of differential reporting. Finally, it enriches the literature about heterogeneity in accounting quality within private firms.

This study reviews and discusses the accounting literature that analyzes the role of auditors and enforcers in the context of fraud.

This literature review includes both qualitative and quantitative studies, based on the idea that the findings from different research paradigms can shed light on the complex interactions between different financial reporting controls. The authors use a mixed-methods research synthesis and select 64 accounting journal articles to analyze the main proxies for fraud, the stages of the fraud process under investigation and the roles played by auditors and enforcers.

The study highlights heterogeneity with respect to the terms and concepts used to capture the fraud phenomenon, a fragmentation in terms of the measures used in quantitative studies and a low level of detail in the fraud analysis. The review also shows a limited number of case studies and a lack of focus on the interaction and interplay between enforcers and auditors.

This study outlines directions for future accounting research on fraud.

The analysis underscores the need for the academic community, policymakers and practitioners to work together to prevent the destructive economic and social consequences of fraud in an increasingly complex and interconnected environment.

This study differs from previous literature reviews that focus on a single monitoring mechanism or deal with fraud in a broadly manner by discussing how the accounting literature addresses the roles and the complex interplay between enforcers and auditors in the context of accounting fraud.

This study uses a meta-analysis approach to analyse the impact of applying corporate green accounting practices as vital sustainable development tools on firm performance. This study aims to examine the moderating effects of country-specific variables and characteristics on the association between corporate green accounting and firm performance.

Three databases were used for a meta-analysis of 68 independent studies involving 19,625 subjects conducted over 25 years from 1996 to 2020.

The results show that corporate green accounting positively affects firm performance, but country-specific variables do not moderate this association. The positive association between corporate green accounting and firm performance was enhanced when it was measured in terms of environmental costs. Subgroup analyses revealed that study characteristics are significant source of heterogeneity in the corporate green accounting indicators-firm performance association.

The findings suggest that firms should strategise to integrate environmental costs into their respective financial accounting frameworks, which would help managers justify the contribution of their firms towards environmental protection.

Accessing accurate and timely information on corporate environmental functioning can assist national policymakers in framing appropriate legislation on environmental protection and sustainable development.

Although meta-analysis has been used previously in accounting research (Guthrie and Murthy, 2009; Alcouffe et al., 2019), to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to use a meta-analytical technique to examine the impact of corporate green accounting on firm performance.

The purpose of the study is to assess if a policy of female inclusive education should be complemented with a policy of female ownership of bank accounts to fight female unemployment. The study therefore examines how female ownership of bank accounts moderates the incidence of female education on female unemployment.

The focus is on 44 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries for the period 2004–2018 and the empirical evidence is based on interactive quantile regressions. The interactions are tailored such that female ownership of bank accounts influences the effect of female inclusive education on female unemployment.

From the empirical findings it is evident that female ownership of bank accounts does not effectively moderate female education in order to reduce female unemployment unless complementary policies are considered. The complementary policies should be in view of boosting the interaction between female education and female bank account ownership in increasing employment opportunities for the female gender and by extension, reducing female unemployment. The invalidity of the moderating effect is robust to the inclusion of more elements in the conditioning information set as well as accounting for other dimensions of endogeneity such as simultaneity and the unobserved heterogeneity. Policy implications are discussed.

This study contributes to the extant literature by assessing how female ownership of bank accounts complements female inclusive education to reduce female unemployment.

This study examines the effect of local government debt (LGD) on corporate earnings management using 25,624 firm-year observations from 2007 to 2019.

Pooled ordinary least squares (OLS) regression is used to examine the impact of LGD on earnings management. A difference-in-differences (DID) method is also used to alleviate potential endogeneity.

Results show that LGD motivates firms to increase earnings management, especially income-decreasing earnings management. Findings are robust to DID method and robustness tests. Heterogeneity analyses show that the positive effect of LGD on earnings management is pronounced in firms with political dependence and moderated by external governance mechanisms. Further discussions indicate that tax enforcement is an underlying channel for LGD to affect earnings management. Firms engage in downward real earnings management by increasing their abnormal discretionary expenditures and higher LGD leads to a greater book-tax difference in those firms that manipulate income-decreasing earnings management.

This study contributes towards examining the political costs hypothesis, the microeconomic effects of LGD and the determinants of earnings management.

This study conducts a meta-analysis to investigate the impact of board diversity, independence and size on carbon emission disclosure.

The results of 22 empirical investigations on the association between board qualities and carbon emission disclosure are synthesised using a meta-analysis approach. Inclusion and exclusion criteria are established, and search strategies are devised to locate relevant material. Data extraction entails gathering important information such as the names of the authors, variables and correlation coefficients. Fisher's z-transformation is used to compute and synthesise effect sizes and assumptions, sensitivity testing and subgroup analysis are performed to assess the robustness of the findings.

A substantial association was discovered between board characteristics and carbon emission disclosure. Board independence and gender diversity revealed small to medium-strength positive relationships, whilst board size had a medium-strength positive correlation. The study periods varied from 2011 to 2022, with 2018 having the most studies. However, highly heterogeneous groups were discovered; further subgroup analyses were then carried out to sort out this issue.

Several limitations were recognised due to the limited number of studies and heterogeneity, although subgroup analysis was used to reduce the influence of heterogeneity. To investigate alternate outcomes, more analysis of the heterogeneity level and potential modifications to the model assumptions may be required.

Companies should consider board size, independence and gender diversity when formulating long-term competitive strategies in the climate change movement. These characteristics can aid in bridging information gaps and garnering stakeholder support for carbon-reduction initiatives.

This meta-analysis addresses a gap in the literature by addressing prior studies' conflicting and inconsistent findings on the association between board characteristics and carbon emission disclosure. It employs a rigorous approach and synthesis strategy to provide a thorough and robust understanding of the crucial role of board characteristics in carbon emission disclosure.

The authors' work aims to identify the employer-specific drivers of the college (or university) wage gap, which has been identified as one of the major determinants of the dynamics of overall wage and income inequality in the past decades. The authors focus on three employer-level features that can be associated with asymmetries in the employment relation orientation adopted for college and non-college-educated employees: (1) size, (2) the share of standard employment and (3) the pervasiveness of incentive pay schemes.

The authors' establishment-level analysis (data from the Basic Survey on Wage Structure (BSWS), 2005–2018) focusses on Japan, an economy characterised by many unique economic and institutional features relevant to the aims of the authors' analysis. The authors use an adjusted measure of firm-specific college wage premium, which is not biased by confounding individual and establishment-level factors and reflects unobservable characteristics of employees that determine the payment of a premium. The authors' empirical methods account for the complexity of the relationships they investigate, and the authors test their baseline outcomes with econometric approaches (propensity score methods) able to address crucial identification issues related to endogeneity and reverse causality.

The authors' findings indicate that larger establishment size, a larger share of regular workers and more pervasive implementation of IPSs for college workers tend to increase the college wage gap once all observable workers, job and establishment characteristics are controlled for. This evidence corroborates the authors' hypotheses that a larger establishment size, a higher share of regular workers and a more developed set-up of performance pay schemes for college workers are associated with a better capacity of employers to attract and keep highly educated employees with unobservable characteristics that justify a wage premium above average market levels. The authors provide empirical evidence on how three relevant establishment-level characteristics shape the heterogeneity of the (adjusted) college wage observed across organisations.

The authors' contribution to the existing knowledge is threefold. First, the authors combine the economics and management/organisation literature to develop new insights that underpin the authors' testable empirical hypotheses. This enables the authors to shed light on employer-level drivers of wage differentials (size, workforce composition, implementation of performance-pay schemes) related to many structural, institutional and strategic dimensions. The second contribution lies in the authors' measure of the “adjusted” college wage gap, which is calculated on the component of individual wages that differs between observationally identical workers in the same establishment. As such, the metric captures unobservable workers' characteristics that can generate a wage premium/penalty. Third, the authors provide empirical evidence on how three relevant establishment-level characteristics shape the heterogeneity of the (adjusted) college wage observed across organisations.

This study aims to examine the diametrically opposite effects of probabilistic (risk) and nonprobabilistic uncertainty (ambiguity) on accounting conservatism.

This study uses panel regression models with year and industry-fixed effects. It uses financial and market data from the communication and energy sectors of 24 countries, encompassing 1,946 firms and 5,838 firm-year observations.

The study reveals that conservatism is a rational response to risk. However, in the presence of higher ambiguity where uncertainty exceeds firm control and outcomes become unpredictable, management reduces conservative accounting practices. Robustness tests support the validity of these findings across different institutional frameworks, agency risks, sample selection and heterogeneity.

This study contributes to the existing literature by exploring the contrasting effects of risk and ambiguity on accounting conservatism. It enhances the understanding of how various institutional factors influence the asymmetric recognition of bad news compared to good news under conditions of uncertainty.

By understanding the role of accounting conservatism in responding to uncertainties, regulators can develop more informed and effective policies that align with the dynamic nature of business environments.

This research provides novel and original ideas suggesting that the change in accounting conservatism is contingent upon the firms’ ambiguity or risk.

In this fast-changing world, digitization has become crucial to organizations, allowing decision-makers to alter corporate processes. Companies with a higher corporate social responsibility (CSR) level not only help encourage employees to focus on their goals, but they also show that they take their social responsibility seriously, which is increasingly important in today’s digital economy. So, this study aims to examine the relationship between digital transformation and CSR disclosure of Chinese A-share companies. Furthermore, this research investigates the moderating impact of governance heterogeneity, including CEO power and corporate internal control (INT) mechanisms.

This study used fixed effect estimation with robust standard errors to examine the relationship between digital transformation and CSR disclosure and the moderating effect of governance heterogeneity among Chinese A-share companies from 2010 to 2020. The whole sample consists of 17,266 firms, including 5,038 state-owned enterprise (SOE) company records and 12,228 non-SOE records. The whole sample data is collected from the China Stock Market and Accounting Research, the Chinese Research Data Services and the WIND databases.

The regression results lead us to three conclusions after classifying the sample into non-SOE and SOE groups. First, Chinese A-share businesses with greater levels of digitalization have lower CSR disclosures. Both SOE and non-SOE are consistent with these findings. Second, increasing CEO authority creates a more centralized company decision-making structure (Breuer et al., 2022; Freire, 2019), which improves the negative association between digitalization and CSR disclosure. These conclusions, however, also apply to non-SOE. Finally, INT reinforces the association between corporate digitization and CSR disclosure, which is especially obvious in SOEs. These findings are robust to alternative HEXUN CSR disclosure index. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the negative relationship between corporate digitalization and CSR disclosures is more pronounced in bigger, highly levered and highly financialized firms.

Digitalization and CSR disclosure are well studied, but few have examined their interactions from a governance heterogeneity perspective in China. Practitioners and policymakers may use these insights to help business owners implement suitable digital policies for firm development from diverse business perspectives.

Diversity and inclusion is a key focus of the profession. This paper investigates the ecological inherited niche of Indonesia and which employers accounting students choose and whether this will result in a diverse and inclusive profession. The authors conceptualise diversity as the demand-from the profession encompassing professional accounting firms, and inclusion as the supply of individuals wishing to enter the profession.

The 1377 responses to a questionnaire survey of students deciding on their career paths were analysed using a multinomial logistic regression and path model.

The findings show that a lack of diversity in the profession is caused by the ecological background, constructing a local niche, that prevents diversity. This is manifest in ethnicity, gender and education, whereby the local niche consists of Chinese males recruited from B-rated private universities. To bring diversity and inclusivity into the workplace, the profession needs to entice people from multi-faceted groups and match ecological niche underpinnings to expectations of the professional landscape. Non-Chinese females are needed to become role models and trail blazers to establish a diverse profession. The public interest will then be better served.

This study uses niche construction as the theoretical framing and demonstrates that the profession needs to take action to become truly diverse and inclusive.