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1 – 10 of 26Zhuang Qian, Charles X. Wang and Haiying Yang
This research aims to empirically investigate the impacts of product and international diversification strategies on firm-level inventory performance.
Abstract
Purpose
This research aims to empirically investigate the impacts of product and international diversification strategies on firm-level inventory performance.
Design/methodology/approach
This study empirically examines the associations between product and international diversification strategies and inventory performance based on a sample of 64,124 observations across 7,367 US publicly traded firms between 1989 and 2019 from the COMPUSTAT Segment, Fundamental Annual and Fundamental Quarterly data files. We employ both linear and nonlinear regression models to perform our empirical analysis.
Findings
This research provides strong evidence that there exists a U-shaped relationship between unrelated product diversification and inventory level and a partially inverted U-shaped relationship between international diversification and inventory level. We also find a positive impact of related product diversification on inventory level, but there is no significant curvilinear relationship between related product diversification and inventory level.
Practical implications
Our research findings offer important insights into top management’s strategic planning for diversification strategies and operations manager’s inventory control policies to achieve the strategic fit between corporate diversification and inventory management.
Originality/value
Product and international diversification strategies not only play an essential role in the firm’s competitive advantage, but also have a significant influence on operations manager’s inventory decision. This research is among the first to systematically investigate how top management’s related product, unrelated product and international diversification strategies may have complex nonlinear impacts on inventory performance.
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Syed Zulfiqar Ali Shah and Fangyi Wan
This study examines whether country-level financial integration affects firms' accounting choices and the quality of financial information.
Abstract
Purpose
This study examines whether country-level financial integration affects firms' accounting choices and the quality of financial information.
Design/methodology/approach
This study employs Propensity Score Matching (PSM), and panel regressions of a large sample of data from 20 emerging markets over the period 1987–2018.
Findings
This study finds evidence that increased level of financial integration is significantly positively associated with firms' accruals earnings management (AEM) and real earnings management (REM).
Research limitations/implications
Findings in the study have implications for standard-setting bodies that aim to enhance the usefulness of financial reporting quality. The study also has implications for various initiatives by governments in emerging markets aimed at raising investor confidence and fostering stock market development through greater financial integration.
Practical implications
Findings in the study have implications for standard-setting bodies that aim to enhance the usefulness and quality of financial reporting. The findings can be of interest to analysts, auditors and other monitoring institutions who play a crucial role in detecting earnings management and reducing information asymmetry. Finally, the study has implications for various initiatives by governments in emerging markets aimed at raising investor confidence and fostering stock market development through greater financial integration.
Originality/value
Findings in the study reveal how country-level financial integration affects accruals and real earnings management in a sample of firms from 20 emerging markets. Further, the study adds to the growing body of literature on emerging markets where capital markets mechanisms, regulatory environment and firm's corporate governance are distinct to developed markets.
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Haoyu Gao, Ruixiang Jiang, Junbo Wang and Xiaoguang Yang
This chapter investigates the cost of public debt for firms using a comprehensive sample consisting of 17,368 industrial bond issues from 1970 to 2011. The empirical evidence…
Abstract
This chapter investigates the cost of public debt for firms using a comprehensive sample consisting of 17,368 industrial bond issues from 1970 to 2011. The empirical evidence shows that yield spreads for seasoned bond issues are significantly lower than those for initial bond issues. This seasoning effect is robust across different sample periods, subsamples, and model specifications. On average, the yield spreads for seasoned bond issues are around 50 bps lower than those for initial bond issues. This difference cannot be explained by other bond and firm characteristics. The seasoning effect is more pronounced for firms with higher levels of uncertainty, lower information disclosure quality, and longer time intervals between the first and subsequent issues. Our empirical findings provide supportive evidence for the extant theories that aim to rationalize the information role in determining the cost of capital.
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Yang S. Yang, Xiaojin Sun, Mengge Li and Tingting Yan
This study investigates the extent to which a firm’s centrality and autonomy in its supply network are associated with the intensity and complexity of its competitive actions.
Abstract
Purpose
This study investigates the extent to which a firm’s centrality and autonomy in its supply network are associated with the intensity and complexity of its competitive actions.
Design/methodology/approach
Utilizing social network analysis and dynamic panel data models, this study analyzes a comprehensive panel dataset with 10,802 firm-year observations across various industries between 2011 and 2018 to test the hypotheses.
Findings
Our findings show that a firm’s level of centrality in its supply network has an inverted U-shaped relationship with both competitive intensity and competitive complexity. In addition, the turning points of these two inverted U-shaped relationships differ in that firms with a lower level of centrality tend to compete aggressively by launching more actions within fewer categories, while firms with a higher level of centrality tend to compete aggressively by launching fewer actions that cover a larger range of categories. Finally, we find that a firm’s structural autonomy has a positive relationship with competitive complexity.
Originality/value
This study bridges the gap between the supply chain management literature and strategic management literature and investigates how supply networks shape competitive aggressiveness. In particular, this research investigates how a firm’s structural position in its supply network affects its competitive actions, an important intermediate mechanism for competitive advantage that has been overlooked in the supply chain management literature.
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This study aims to examine whether and how the experience of specialized external governance mechanisms mandated by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 – the…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to examine whether and how the experience of specialized external governance mechanisms mandated by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 – the actuary and auditor – affect pension plan funding.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses data from annual pension plan regulatory reports (Form 5500), Form 10-K filings, Form DEF 14A filings (company proxy statements) and publicly available data sources. The hand-collected data include information related to the pension plan’s actuary and auditor and various pension plan data disclosed in the company’s financial statement footnotes.
Findings
The author finds that more experienced actuaries and auditors are associated with better funded pension plans, especially when the company has higher financial risk or lower board independence. Additional analyses indicate that companies with more experienced actuaries and pension plan auditors are more likely to make higher annual pension plan contributions and hold fewer Level 3 fair value assets.
Originality/value
The dearth of pension plan governance research generally focuses on whether and how internal governance mechanisms affect pension plan funding. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first empirical study of the relationship between external pension plan governance mechanisms and pension plan funding.
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Wang Dong, Weishi Jia, Shuo Li and Yu (Tony) Zhang
The authors examine the role of CEO political ideology in the credit rating process.
Abstract
Purpose
The authors examine the role of CEO political ideology in the credit rating process.
Design/methodology/approach
This study adopts a quantitative method with panel data regressions using a sample of 5,211 observations from S&P 500 firms from 2001 to 2012.
Findings
The authors find that firms run by Republican-leaning CEOs, who tend to have conservative political ideologies, enjoy more favorable credit ratings than firms run by Democratic-leaning CEOs. In addition, the association between CEO political ideology and credit ratings is more pronounced for firms with high operating uncertainty, low capital intensity, high growth potential, weak corporate governance and low financial reporting quality. Finally, the authors find that CEO political ideology affects a firm's cost of debt incremental to credit ratings, consistent with debt investors incorporating CEO political ideology in their pricing decisions.
Research limitations/implications
Leveraging CEO political ideology, the authors document that credit rating agencies incorporate managerial conservatism in their credit rating decisions. This finding suggests that CEO political ideology serves as a meaningful signal for managerial conservatism.
Practical implications
The study suggests that credit rating agencies incorporate CEO political ideology in their credit rating process. Other capital market participants such as auditors and retail investors can also use CEO political ideology as a proxy for managerial conservatism when evaluating firms.
Social implications
The paper carries practical implications for practitioners, firm executives and regulators. The results on the association between CEO political ideology and credit ratings suggest that other financial institutions could also incorporate CEO political ideology in their evaluation in their evaluation of firms. For example, when evaluating audit risk and determining audit pricing, auditors may add CEO political ideology as a risk factor. For firms, especially those that have Democratic-leaning CEOs, the authors suggest that they could reduce the unfavorable effect of CEO political ideology on credit ratings by improving their corporate governance and financial reporting quality, as demonstrated in the cross-sectional analyses. Finally, this study shows that CEO political ideology, as measured by CEOs' political contributions, is closely related to a firm's credit ratings. This finding may inform regulators that greater transparency for CEOs' political contributions is needed as information on contributions could help capital market participants perform risk analyses for firms.
Originality/value
Credit rating agencies release their research methodologies for determining corporate credit ratings and identify managerial conservatism as an important factor that affects their risk assessments. The extant literature, however, has not empirically investigated the relation between credit ratings and managerial conservatism, which, according to behavioral consistency theory, can be proxied by CEO political ideology. This study provides novel empirical evidence that identifies CEO political ideology as an important input factor in the credit rating process.
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Cynthia R Phillips, Abraham Stefanidis and Victoria Shoaf
Drawing on legitimacy and upper-echelon theory, this paper aims to investigate the moderating role of corporate governance in the relationship between corporate social performance…
Abstract
Purpose
Drawing on legitimacy and upper-echelon theory, this paper aims to investigate the moderating role of corporate governance in the relationship between corporate social performance (CSP) and board gender diversity (BGD).
Design/methodology/approach
Using Morgan Stanley Capital International measures of social and governance performance, the authors use 2,950 firm-year observations from US companies for the years 2016–2020 to show that good performance on social issues drives BGD.
Findings
The panel data model indicates that the relationship between CSP and BGD is strengthened when firms display robust corporate governance.
Originality/value
This study contributes to the extant literature through empirical consideration of CSP as a predictor of BGD, a relationship that has rarely been examined. It further highlights the significant role of corporate governance in ensuring that women have access to corporate boards. Discussion and findings highlight that social performance and governance may significantly contribute to the diversity of socially cognizant boards.
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The purpose of this paper is to explore how variations in management’s tone within management’s discussion and analysis (MD&A) sections of 10-K reports can serve as an indicator…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore how variations in management’s tone within management’s discussion and analysis (MD&A) sections of 10-K reports can serve as an indicator of tax avoidance and highlight the complex relationship between such linguistic shifts and the tax avoidance decisions within firms.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses a textual analysis approach to identify linguistic cues in MD&A sections of 10-K filings related to tax avoidance, going beyond traditional quantitative measures. The study uses differences in negative word occurrences in MD&A to measure management’s tone change and examines various measures of tax avoidance. The sample covers the period from 1993 to 2017 and comprises all firms with 10-K filings available on EDGAR, totaling over 30,000 firm-year observations.
Findings
The findings indicate a complementary relationship between tax avoidance and other drivers of firm performance. When firms have more negative management’s tone, they are less willing to engage in tax avoidance and vice versa. The study’s approach with management’s tone change provides a different and statistically significant improvement in model fit for detecting tax avoidance.
Practical implications
This paper provides actionable insights for detecting tax avoidance through the analysis of management’s tone in corporate disclosures, offering a new tool for researchers, investors and tax authorities. It highlights the importance of linguistic cues as indicators of tax avoidance behavior, complementing traditional financial metrics.
Originality/value
The paper contributes to the literature by using management’s tone change as a time-varying factor to explain tax avoidance behavior. It uncovers a larger set of linguistic cues in MD&A that can be used to detect tax avoidance. This research provides a complementary approach to traditional quantitative tax avoidance measures and offers insights into the overall relationship between tax avoidance and firm performance, going beyond one-dimensional measures typically used in prior literature.
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Wray Bradley and Li Sun
The purpose of the study is to investigate the impact of asset redeployability on the level of corporate cash holdings.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of the study is to investigate the impact of asset redeployability on the level of corporate cash holdings.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors use regression analysis to examine the relation between asset redeployability and corporate cash holdings.
Findings
Using a large panel sample of US public firms from 1990 to 2020, the authors find a significant positive relation between asset redeployability and cash, which suggests that firms with more redeployable assets hold more cash.
Originality/value
The authors contribute to a growing literature in accounting and finance that investigates the impact of asset redeployability on firm characteristics and also contribute to the literature on the determinants of cash holdings.
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Hsing-Hua Chang, Chen-Hsin Lai, Kuen-Liang Lin and Shih-Kuei Lin
Factor investment is booming in global asset management, especially environmental, social, and governance (ESG), dividend yield, and volatility factors. In this chapter, we use…
Abstract
Factor investment is booming in global asset management, especially environmental, social, and governance (ESG), dividend yield, and volatility factors. In this chapter, we use data from the US securities market from 2003 to 2019 to predict dividends and volatility factors through machine learning and historical data–based methods. After that, we utilize particle swarm optimization to construct the Markowitz portfolio with limits on the number of assets and weight restrictions. The empirical results show that that the prediction ability using XGBoost is superior to the historical factor investment method. Moreover, the investment performance of our portfolio with ESG, high-yield, and low-volatility factors outperforms baseline methods, especially the S&P 500 ETF.
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