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This study aims to examine the effect of audit client’s use of blockchain (BC) on auditing accounting estimates (AEs), especially the inherent risk (IR), control risk (CR) and collection of audit evidence.

The study used a questionnaire to collect data for a sample of 249 auditors. A partial least squares method is used to test the hypotheses.

The results showed positive relationship between audit client’s use of BC and both IR and CR when auditing AEs. The results also showed the BC improves the collection of sufficient and appropriate audit evidence when auditing AEs.

This study did not address all the risks associated with auditing AEs, including fraud, detection, sampling and nonsampling risks, and the procedures and tests for auditing AEs.

There are several implications of this research, including that it informs the revision of auditing standards and guidelines to correspond with successive technological changes, which subsequently clarify the roles and responsibilities of auditors, and the study findings will also cause changes to the design and form of audit procedures so as to obtain sufficient and appropriate audit evidence.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is considered the first of its kind that deals with the effects of audit client’s use of BC on audit AEs in the Middle East and North Africa region. This study also presented different sets of measures as proxies for measuring IR, CR and AE.

The authors examine the effect of climate risk on accounting conservatism for a sample of listed companies operating in 26 developing countries.

The authors employ the Climate Risk Index (CRI) developed by Germanwatch to capture the severity of losses due to extreme weather events at the country level. The authors use different approaches to measure firm-level accounting conservatism.

The authors find that greater climate risk leads to a lower level of accounting conservatism. The results hold even after using different estimation methods.

Although the authors' analysis is limited to the period 2007–2016, it could be helpful for standard setters such as International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and International Sustainable Standards Board (ISSB) as they may consider the potential effect of climate risk in their international standards.

The negative impacts of climate risk on the quality of financial reporting as proxied by accounting conservatism could trigger regulators and standard setters to require disclosure of information relating to climate risks and to incorporate climate-related risks in their risk management systems. In addition, for policymakers, incorporating accounting conservatism as a financial quality reporting standard could help promote greater transparency, accuracy and reliability in financial reporting in the context of climate risk.

The authors add to the literature on international differences in accounting conservatism by showing that climate risk significantly affects unconditional and conditional conservatism. The authors' results provide fresh evidence of the dark side of climate change. That is, climate risk is shown to decrease financial reporting quality.

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.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of the accounting system reform on corporate innovation behavior and the heterogeneity and underlying mechanisms of this impact. This paper further aims to study the impact of accounting system reform on corporate value.

This study takes China's A-share listed corporates as a sample and uses the exogenous policy shock of the implementation of the New Accounting Standards in 2007 to design the identification strategy of propensity score matching and difference-in-differences method. By comparing the differences between the innovation level of corporates in high-tech industries and non-high-tech industries before and after the implementation of the New Accounting Standards, the impact of the accounting system reform on corporates' innovative behavior can be identified.

Results show that compared with corporates in traditional industries, high-tech corporates obtained higher patent output after the implementation of the New Accounting Standards. This reform mainly affects corporate innovation by improving corporate risk-taking. In addition, this paper finds that the reform of the accounting system has increased the market value of high-tech corporates in the long run.

This study provides new empirical evidence for addressing the insufficient innovation incentives for market entities and enriches the existing literature on the economic effects of the change of accounting systems and the influencing factors of corporate innovative behavior from the accounting system perspective.

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.

Following recent high-profile audit failures, concern has been expressed that auditors are not demonstrating sufficient skepticism when exercising professional judgment. In particular, client assumptions and estimations relating to hypothetical valuations in financial reporting are not being challenged. This paper seeks to address the issue by advancing a decision-making framework aimed at guiding auditors beyond regulatory reductionist thinking towards an enhanced understanding of the cognitive processes which shape professional judgment in forming a reliable audit opinion.

Drawing on the normative philosophical and theological teachings of Bernard Lonergan, the authors' decision-making framework embodies reflective thinking and the data of consciousness to highlight the central role played by enquiry in the dynamics of understanding, judgment and decision-making. Such enquiry elicits challenge of the management bias inherent in hypothetical valuations.

Auditing through a Lonerganian lens allows auditors to reflect on their approach to objective decision-making by offering a set of cognitive tools to enhance the enquiry essential for nurturing professional skepticism.

This paper contributes to the literature by developing the somewhat neglected discourse on the cognitive processes essential for professional skepticism and audit judgment. The authors demonstrate how Lonerganian self-appropriation intensifies an awareness of the recursive cognitive activities pertinent to objective judgment and decision-making. This awakened consciousness has the potential not only to change how auditors question evidence to make informed judgments and decisions, but also to normalize the practice of challenge.

This study aims to investigate the effect of national culture (power distance, individualism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance and long-term orientation) on audit report lag.

The authors use two econometric approaches (ordinary least squares (OLS) and quantile regression) using STATA software for a sample of 1,208 firm-year observations over the period of 2017–2018.

Using Hofstede’s (2001) cultural dimensions (power distance, individualism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance and long-term orientation), the authors find that masculinity and long-term orientation are positively associated with audit report lag, while uncertainty avoidance is negatively associated with the same variable. Quantile regressions suggest that the adverse effect of masculinity on audit report lag is more prevailing for companies communicating companies' annual reports in a timely manner. Furthermore, the positive association between power distance and audit report lag exists only under tardy disclosure regime. Quantile regressions also confirm that the negative (positive) effect of uncertainty avoidance (long-term orientation) on audit report lag is maintained under different timely disclosure regime. Additional analysis conducted with respect to legal system shows that individualism becomes a significant predictor of audit delays with a significant negative effect for common law countries, while uncertainty avoidance has a positive effect on the same variable in civil law countries characterized by high level of discretion and secrecy.

The results of this study suggest that national culture as an informal institution may complement formal institutions (e.g. financial markets) in promoting timely disclosure. For instance, foreign investors may view high uncertainty avoidance scores, in common law emerging economies, as an indicator of transparency and timely disclosure.

This study adds to the extant literature a further understanding of the impact of cultural dimensions on timely disclosure, as proxied by, audit report lag. The use of quantile regression approach shows how different timely disclosure regime may affect the association between masculinity, power distance and audit report lag.

Brazil’s regional inequality is an important topic due to the large and persistent differences in development between states and the high levels of inequality in the country. These variations in development can potentially render survey data inaccurate since the significance of capital income varies across the states. Besides, previous studies incorporating tax and national accounts data globally have mainly focused on measuring the income distribution at the country-level. This approach can limit the understanding of inequality, especially when considering large countries such as Brazil.

The methodology used to construct these estimates follows the guidelines of the Distributional National Accounts, whose core goal is to provide income distribution measures consistent with macroeconomic aggregates and harmonized across countries and time. The procedure has three main steps: first, it corrects the survey’s underrepresentation of top incomes using tax data. Then, it accounts for national income items not included in the survey or tax data, such as imputed rents and undistributed profits. Finally, it ensures that all components match the national income.

Compared to survey-based estimations, the results reveal a new angle on the state-level inequality. This study indicates that Amazonas, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo have a more concentrated income distribution. The top 1\% of earners in these states receives around 28\% of total pre-tax income, while the top 10\% receive nearly 60\%. On the other end, Amapá (AP), Acre (AC), Rondônia (RO) and Santa Catarina (SC) are the states where the income distribution is less concentrated. There were no significant changes in the income distribution across the states during the period analyzed.

This study combines survey, tax and national accounts data to construct new estimates of Brazil’s state-level income distribution from 2006 to 2019. Previous results only considered income captured in surveys, which usually misses a significant part of capital incomes. This limitation may bias comparisons as capital income has different importance across the states. The new estimates represent the income of top groups more accurately, account for the entire national income and enable to compare regional inequality levels consistently with other countries.

This paper’s objective is to provide a systematic literature review of the contextual factors affecting downward communication from supervisors to subordinates in the audit environment. In addition, this review identifies emerging research themes and directions for future research.

I accomplish this review’s objectives by leveraging communication literature to establish a framework to identify and synthesize contextual factors affecting downward communication in the audit environment. The review identifies 50 published articles in the last 20 years from leading accounting and auditing journals.

This study consolidates research findings on downward communication under two primary contextual factors: (1) message and (2) channel. Findings indicate that empirical research examining communication in audit is fragmented and limited. Studies examining the message focus heavily on its content and treatment in the areas of feedback, nonverbal cues, and fraud brainstorming, and a handful of additional studies examine the effectiveness of the channel in these areas. Additional research is needed to understand a broader set of supervisor–subordinate communication practices, including those that are computer-mediated, and their effect on subordinate auditors’ judgments and behaviors in the contemporary audit environment.

Much of the audit literature examining communication to date is topic-versus construct-based, making it difficult to see how the research findings relate to one another. This review is the first to synthesize the literature to provide academics recommendations for a way forward, and inform practitioners of communication practices whereby supervisors can be trained to improve audit quality.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between tax avoidance and earnings persistence in the light of a developing economy, with the main focus on China.

In the analysis, the author conducts a survey on the tax avoidance situation of Chinese listed companies from 2012 to 2020. Then, a multivariate regression analysis is performed in order to analyse the relationship between corporate tax avoidance and earnings persistence.

The findings of the present study show that tax avoidance has a significant positive effect on earnings persistence. However, when the degree of tax avoidance is high, the “risk effect” of tax avoidance exceeds the “value effect”, and tax avoidance will reduce the persistence of earnings. This conclusion is even more prominent when the company is non-state-owned. Further research shows the increase of institutional investors’ shareholding ratio can improve “value effect” of tax avoidance, lessen “risk effect” of tax avoidance, and positively affect the relationship between tax avoidance and earnings persistence.

This study provides evidence for investors to understand the dual effect of tax avoidance on earnings persistence. The results may have implications for regulatory bodies. They can provide a better understanding of the corporate governance role of institutional investors in curbing opportunistic tax avoidance.

This study enriches the research on tax avoidance effects by analysing the impact of tax avoidance on earnings persistence. This study also compensates for the shortcomings of analysing earnings persistence mainly from the perspective of tax differences in the past, and promotes the study of the corporate governance effects of institutional investors under different levels of tax avoidance.