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This paper aims to investigate the effect of auditor switching and lowballing on conditional conservatism, particularly how different types of auditor switching, namely, upward, downward and lateral switching to/from Big 4 and industry specialists, affect earnings quality in the following selected Asian countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, South Korea and Thailand.

Using conditional conservatism as a proxy for earnings quality, this study hypothesises that upward switching from non-Big 4 to Big 4 auditors, or from non-specialist to specialist auditors, would result in high conditional conservatism, while downward switching would lead to low conditional conservatism. The study further tests whether lowballing provides a viable explanation for reduced earnings conservatism in firms that switch from Big 4 to non-Big 4 auditors, or from specialist to non-specialist auditors.

The analysis, on a sample of 28,073 firm-year observations from 2007 to 2016, shows that the decision to downgrade auditors leads to lower conditional conservatism in the year of switching, compared with other firms and the pre-switching year. The evidence further shows that, when firms downgrade their auditors, lowballing contributes to a decrease in conditional conservatism in the first year of audit switching. Further, this research finds that switching to specialist auditors will result in increased conditional conservatism, while switching from specialist auditors to non-specialist auditors will result in reduced conditional conservatism.

The findings of this study are useful to investors who are looking to diversify their investment portfolio in developing markets, as evidence about auditor switching and quality of financial reporting may be an important factor in their investment decisions. Downward auditor switches and lowballing could act as red flags to investors in the sense that these events could signal a decrease in conditional conservatism and, hence, quality of earnings.

This research offers new evidence to support the view that management decisions to switch to lower-quality auditors will force newly appointed auditors to acquiesce to clients’ demands for reporting low-quality earnings.

This paper examines the Random Walk Hypothesis (RWH) for aggregate New Zealand share market returns, as well as the CRSP NYSE‐AMEX (USA) index during the 1980‐2001 period. Using several indices, we rely on the variance‐ratio test and find evidence to support the rejection of the RWH with some evidence of a momentum effect. However, we find evidence to suggest the behaviour of share prices to be time‐dependent in New Zealand. For example, we find the indices tested were closer to random after the 1987 share market crash. Further analysis showed even stronger results for periods subsequent to the passage of the Companies Act 1993 and the Financial Reporting Act 1993. We also find evidence that indices based on large capitalisation stocks are more likely to follow a random walk compared to those based on smaller stocks. For the USA index, we find stronger evidence of random behaviour in our sample period compared to the earlier period examined by Lo and Mackinlay (1988)

This paper aims to provide preliminary evidence on the determinants of non‐audit service provision and whether the provision of such services impairs auditors' independence in the context of Bangladesh.

Both univariate and multivariate regression methodologies are used to test the hypotheses. Signaling theory is used to test whether auditors from a non‐litigious environment are concerned about signaling their quality to the market by constraining clients' earnings management behavior.

Results show that larger firms, firms with more liquidity, firms having an audit firm with an international link as their auditor and multinational subsidiaries purchase more non‐audit services, while highly‐leveraged firms purchase less. With respect to non‐audit fees (NAF) causing auditors to sacrifice their independence, this study fails to find any relationship between NAF and discretionary accruals (DACCR) after controlling for factors that are expected to drive DACCR behavior.

Use of DACCR as an earnings management device has been criticized on the ground that managers could use DACCR to signal their own private information. Hence, future research should look at alternative proxies of earnings management to investigate the relationship between non‐audit services and earnings management.

The findings of this paper will be of use to financial reporting regulatory authorities in Bangladesh, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission of Bangladesh as well as the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Bangladesh, regarding the corporate governance role played by the auditors.

Use of DACCR to detect earnings management behavior in the context of Bangladesh is a novel idea. The findings that the purchase of non‐audit services does not lead to increased earnings management behavior in a developing country context further strengthens the notion that there is a spill‐over effect of providing non‐audit services.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Bangladesh is an emerging economy and international audit firms operate there through affiliated local audit firms. The Bangladesh audit market can be characterized as an intensely competitive small audit market with relatively poor demand for high‐audit quality. In addition, Bangladesh has a relatively small and under developed but growing capital market that is characterized by poor corporate regulation and weak investor protection. The purpose of this paper is to examine the association between Big 4 affiliated auditors and accruals quality in Bangladesh.

Following prior literature, this paper uses both absolute discretionary accruals and signed discretionary accruals as proxies of accruals quality. The sample is 382 firm‐year observations and covers fiscal years 2000‐2003.

It was found that the association between Big 4 affiliates and accruals quality in Bangladesh depends on measures of accruals quality and accruals models used. Overall, Big 4 affiliates do not have a positive impact on accruals quality of their clients in Bangladesh.

This paper contributes to the literature on audit quality and accruals quality. The results potentially suggest that Big 4 affiliates do not have any positive impact on accruals quality of clients in an intensely competitive audit market where the demand for quality audit is poor and monitoring is lax and raise potential implications for policy makers and market participants in Bangladesh.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between attitude functions and attitude towards social media advertising. Additionally, this study also examines the relationship between attitude towards social media advertising and purchase intention.

The data was collected via an online survey among Malaysian Muslim participants. Quantitative analysis was used to test the hypothesis. A total of 280 respondents participated in the online survey but only 264 responses fit the analysis. The data was analysed via SPSS and partial least squares structural equation modelling.

The findings of this paper show that attitude functions, namely, utilitarian, value-expressive, ego-defensive and religiosity have a significant positive influence on attitude towards social media advertising, whilst knowledge function was found to be insignificant. Attitude towards social media advertising was also found to have a significant positive influence on purchase intention.

Advertisers should also consider the religious aspects of Muslim consumers and their level of sensitivity as Muslims nowadays are well-informed. This is to avoid controversies and have a better understanding of their consumer needs.

This is one of the few studies examining the influence of religiosity in the social media advertising of controversial products such as bubble tea.

The main purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of globalization on the synchronization of international financial markets. Monthly data from January 1990 to July 2005 for ten major stock markets, namely, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, the UK, and the USA are used.

A battery of test procedures to determine the stationarity conditions of the data set is employed. The Johansen and Jsuelius method is used to test for the existence of long run equilibrium relationship among various markets. If a given market is found to be integrated of order one, it would imply that the market is weak‐form efficient. Similarly, if markets are collectively found to be cointegrated, this would suggest that globalization had a significant impact on international financial integration.

Results indicate that each market is weak‐form efficient. As such, price movement in every market is random and cannot be predicted. The tests produced a large number of cointegrating vectors which implied a strong long run relationship between all markets. Thus, globalization seems to have greatly impacted international financial integration.

The findings of this paper are expected to provide valuable insights into international portfolio diversification as an investment strategy.

Corruption is a global phenomenon. The 2016 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Report and the 2019 Malaysia National Anti-Corruption Plan (NACP) Report stated that the government sector most prone to corruption is procurement. The purpose of this study is to explore what drives the government procurement practitioners to commit corruption or uphold integrity. The novelty of this research is it focusses on the human aspect based on a human model which comprises both the physical and non-physical dimensions. It incorporated four theories which are the virtue theory, transaction cost theory (TCT), human governance (HG) philosophy and Al-Ghazali theory of the soul to design the research framework.

This approach to counteract corruption is through the inner “Self” (spirituality) and is not limited or bound to processes, procedures, rules, regulations, systems and structures.

The findings obtained through the phenomenological method suggest that the Inciting Soul is the driver behind corruption. This happens when intellect (‘Aql) becomes submissive to appetition (Shahwa) and self-assertion (Ghadab) resulting in vice characters. In upholding integrity, Soul-at-Peace is the driver where intellect dominates appetition and self-assertion leading to virtue characters. The HG philosophy is what encapsulates the taxonomy of virtue character.

This research concentrates only on understanding why corruption happens among those with authority. Nevertheless, this research did not delve into the inculcation of HG. Therefore, the authors would suggest for future research is to explore techniques to inculcate the ability of an individual to exercise all the necessary inner “Self” functions (to curb corruption) without having intervention from an external authority.

Corruption is a global phenomenon. The 2016 OECD Report and the 2019 Malaysia NACP Report found that procurement is the government sector most prone to corruption.

The novelty of this research is its focus on the human aspect based on the model of a human comprising both the physical and non-physical dimensions. The theoretical framework integrates the virtue theory, TCT, HG philosophy and Al-Ghazali theory of the Soul.