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This paper aims to examine the association between perceived firm risk and two reporting mechanisms: risk disclosure and earnings smoothing in the UK context.

This study juxtaposes three competing views, the “null”, the “divergence” and the “convergence” hypotheses, and empirically investigates whether risk disclosure and earnings smoothing affect firm perceived risk for a sample of large UK firms with rich and poor information environments. This study also uses the global financial crisis as an external shock on overall risk in the economy to investigate when and how managers use these two reporting mechanisms to shape the firm perceived risk.

This paper documents that risk disclosures have no significant effect on investors’ risk perceptions, consistent with risk disclosures containing boilerplate and generic statements about firm risk. This paper also finds that earnings smoothing reduces investors’ risk perceptions, reflecting investors’ interpretations about future firm performance. Additional tests reveal that earnings smoothing is not associated with perceived firm risk for firms with rich information environments and expanded risk disclosures. Furthermore, reporting smooth earnings decreases perceived firm risk following the global financial crisis. These findings are robust to alternative specifications and measures of earnings smoothing as well as post-filing perceived firm risk.

This study does not distinguish between the garbling role and the informational role of earnings smoothing. The risk disclosure measurement used in this study, developed based on UK annual reports, may limit the generalizability of findings to other countries.

The findings suggest that managers should revise their risk disclosure strategies to provide in-depth details on firm risk. Investors might require information and thorough assessment to evaluate investment risks when firms provide generic risk disclosures and smoothed earnings by consulting sources like financial intermediaries. Regulators should keep an eye on firms reporting boilerplate risk disclosures and on how smoothing earnings impacts the firm perceived risk following economic turmoil, to guide interventions that promote market stability.

The findings provide new insights into when and how managers use their financial reporting discretion to make firms appear less risky and, therefore, influence investors’ risk perceptions.

The objective of this study is to investigate how the implementation of an Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) influences an ETS-regulated firm’s level of earnings smoothness.

Using a staggered difference-in-differences model based on China’s ETS pilots commencing in 2013, this study investigates how the implementation of ETS pilots affects regulated firms’ earnings smoothing relative to non-regulated firms. The sample period spans from 2008 to 2019. This model incorporates time-invariant firm-specific heterogeneity, time-specific heterogeneity, and a series of firm characteristics to establish causality. Robustness tests justify findings.

The results show that after implementing an ETS pilot, regulated firms increase their earnings smoothness relative to non-regulated firms. Regulated firms strategically smooth their earnings to obtain additional financial resources and meet compliance costs arising from an ETS. Further analysis reveals that regulated firms’ earnings smoothing activity is a function of environmental regulations, managerial integrity, and capital market incentives.

This study deviates from past research focusing on the environmental consequences of ETS by indicating that an ETS affects regulated firms’ financial reporting decisions. Specifically, regulated firms resort to earnings smoothing as a short-term exit strategy from financing concerns arising from environmental regulations. This finding expands prior literature primarily focusing on the effect of tax and financial reporting regulations on earnings smoothness. This study also indicates that firms utilize earning smoothing to lower their short-term cost of capital, which enables them to access additional financing at a lower cost and reconfigure their operations to meet stakeholder environmental demands.

This study empirically tests the use of loan loss provisions (LLPs) for earnings and capital smoothing when emphasis is laid on banks' riskiness and adoption of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRSs) in Nigeria.

Annual bank-level data are hand-extracted between 2007 and 2017 from annual reports of a sample 16 deposit money banks (DMBs), and analysed using appropriate panel regression models subsequent to a number of diagnostic tests including heteroscedasticity, autocorrelation and cross-sectional dependence. The use of both reported LLPs (TLLP) and discretionary LLPs (DLLP) for earnings and capital management is tested to advance the practice in the literature.

Generally, the study finds that Nigerian DMBs manage capital via LLPs, while mixed results are obtained for earnings smoothing. However, during IFRS, Nigerian DMBs' management of capital is identifiable with TLLP, while smoothing of earnings is peculiar to DLLP. Additionally, evidence of the improvement in loan loss reporting quality expected during IFRS for riskier Nigerian DMBs, could not be attained. This is corroborated by the study's findings of the use of both TLLP and DLLP for earnings and capital management during IFRS by DMBs in solvency crisis against the only use of TLLP to manage capital found for the entire period.

The evidential capital and earnings lopsidedness may subject Nigerian DMBs' going-concern to a lot of questions.

The study sets a foremost record in the empirical test of managerial opportunistic behaviour embedded in earnings and capital concurrently while accounting for loan losses by all categories of Nigerian DMBs in terms of riskiness, following accounting regime change.

This paper examines the determinants of bank income smoothing using loan loss provisions in the United Kingdom or Great Britain from 1999 to 2017.

The study used ordinary least square (OLS) regression and applying the HAC robust standard error correction test.

The findings showed that UK banks use loan loss provision for income smoothing purposes. Income smoothing is greater in times of high economic policy uncertainty. The extent of bank income smoothing is reduced by foreign bank presence, UK GAAP adoption, IFRS9 adoption, and high levels of voice and accountability. Also, there is reduced income smoothing using loan loss provisions during a financial crisis and in periods of economic prosperity.

The implication is that economic conditions, institutional governance and accounting disclosure rules can influence the extent of bank income smoothing in the United Kingdom. The findings of the study contribute to several studies that explore the determinants of bank income smoothing.

No study has extensively examined the determinants of bank income smoothing in Great Britain or the United Kingdom. The present study fills this gap in the literature.

This paper studies the association between earnings opacity and corporate social responsibility disclosures of firms listed on the Vietnamese Stock Exchange.

We utilize a dataset comprising a sample of all listed Vietnamese firms for the period of 2014–2022. Data regarding corporate social responsibility information are gathered manually. Following Dechow et al. (1995), Kothari et al. (2005) and Bhattacharya et al. (2003), earnings opacity is measured by using three proxies, including abnormal accruals, earnings smoothing and loss avoidance. Our hypothesis was tested via ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions. To address endogeneity problems, we use the two-stage instrumental variable method (IV-2SLS) as well as the generalized method of moments (GMM) to ensure the robustness of our results.

We find that earnings opacity is positively related to corporate social responsibility disclosures. Cross-sectional analyses indicate that managers of firms disguise their opportunistic behaviour by disclosing more information about corporate social responsibility. The evidence also shows that firms experience long-run underperformance when having higher earnings opacity and greater sustainability disclosures. Our results remain robust even after correcting for endogeneity using the IV approach and the GMM method.

Evidence from this study can serve as a warning signal to the investment community, highlighting that some methods aimed at enhancing a firm’s corporate social responsibility disclosures might be used to obstruct other unethical activities. Moreover, the results of this study can help regulators gain a better comprehension of firms' reporting patterns concerning corporate social responsibility initiatives. It should not only reform the corporate social responsibility regulation but also impose stronger litigation for firms to enhance the quality of corporate social responsibility disclosures.

We are the first to present evidence regarding the relationship between earnings opacity and corporate social responsibility disclosure in Vietnam.

This study aims to study the impact of earnings quality on firms’ financial performance.

An unbalanced panel data of 237 small- and medium-sized Portuguese companies from the mold industry, using 2010–2018 yearly data was analyzed. While most studies focus only on earnings management when assessing earnings quality, in this study six proxies for earnings quality are used, namely, accruals quality (a proxy for earnings management), earnings persistence, earnings predictability, earnings smoothness, earnings timeliness and earnings conservatism. Moreover, two proxies of financial performance are considered, the return on assets and the economic value added. An econometric model was estimated using either a fixed-effects or a random-effects specification to account for the individual firm-specific effects and ensure heteroscedasticity corrected estimates.

The results show that managers must be concerned with the quality of reported earnings, as it can affect positively firms’ financial performance, especially regarding accruals quality. Persistence, predictability, smoothness, timeliness and conservatism are shown not to exert significant influence on financial performance in the sample.

This work contributes not only as a literature review on these thematic but also to firms’ managers and stakeholders, who have information that helps them select strategies that guarantee earnings quality and improve firms’ financial performance.

This study proposed an econometric model that studies the relationship between earnings quality (using several proxies for it) and financial performance that can be applied to all companies.

This study aims to examine the impact of culture on earnings management after changing to International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS).

The study’s sample selection comprises all publicly listed firms in 25 countries between 2000 and 2017 from DataStream database with cultural dimensions ratings from Hofstede et al. (2010). The initial sample contained 2,451 firms.

This study provides evidence that the interaction between national culture and IFRS adoption remains influential in explaining differences in the magnitude of earnings management behavior across countries.

This study higlights how IFRS and the cultural values interact with each other and affect earnings quality. In particular, the authors provide evidence on the relationship between individualism, uncertainty avoidance, power distance and masculinity of national culture and earnings management and, primarily, find that national culture significantly influences the decisions of managers after adopting IFRS.

This paper explores the relationship between earnings management and firms' value through the moderating effect of the missing elements – corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure and state ownership in Russian companies. The main argument of the paper is that CSR disclosure can be used as a mitigating mechanism to weaken the negative relationship between earnings manipulation and market value. Additionally test whether state ownership is an important moderating factor in this relationship are conducted as state has always played an important role in the emerging Russian market.

The hypotheses are tested on panel data for 223 publicly listed Russian firms for the period 2012–2018. A number of robustness tests are used to check the obtained results for consistency. Following previous research GMM method is employed to address endogeneity concerns.

Supported by stakeholder theory, it is observed that firms that disclosed more CSR information experience a weaker negative relationship between earnings management and market value because investors and other stakeholders positively evaluate a positive CSR image. This negative effect of earnings management on market value is even weaker for state-owned companies as market participants appreciate involvement of state-owned companies in CSR activities and place greater expectations on these firms to be responsible without clear understanding whether these actions are “window dressing” for this type of companies or not.

The study results provide new insights into the relation between earnings management, firm's value, CSR disclosure and state ownership in emerging-market firms. The paper highlight the importance of considering country-specific factors, such as state ownership, while analysing the market reaction on CSR disclosure and earnings management since the institutional peculiarities may help to explain differences in the obtained results.

This study aims to analyze the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and quality of accounting report, especially on earnings management (EM). In addition, potential moderators of this relationship are examined.

After a comprehensive study of potential mechanisms, the authors obtain plenty of empirical results to open the black box of the link between CSR and EM. Meta-analysis is applied on 51 studies from 35 papers. Further analysis is also carried out to determine the moderating effects, such as the cultural and sample selection differences in these papers.

CSR is negatively associated with EM. In addition, this effect is moderated by cultural difference, CSR measurement, and year of sample selection.

Two patterns of the hypothesis between CSR and EM are confirmed based on agency cost theory, a theoretical shift of corporate ethics based on organizational moral perspective. Several useful suggestions are also provided for future studies on the empirical model and sample selection. Further research is necessary to clarify the agency cost behind the two theoretical patterns.

CSR is not a tool for firms to market but rather a strategy to ensure their consistency with moral principles, indicating that management should pay more attention to the potential damage of the incongruence between CSR and accounting reporting quality. CSR reporting quality remains an important issue for legislature to guarantee continued firm operations.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to analyze the CSR and EM link using a meta-analysis and to consider its underlying mechanism under the global environment. Previous method design and sample selection are reviewed to provide reference for future studies.

The study aims to investigate market reactions associated with the JUST 100 rankings published by JUST Capital, a non-profit organization, as well as differences in financial reporting quality and performance between selected firms and their industry peers.

This study uses a sample of 431 firms selected as the 100 America’s Most Just Companies between 2016 and 2020 by JUST Capital. This study performs both an event study to determine whether the rankings are useful to investors and cross-sectional regression analyses on the characteristics of selected firms compared to their peers.

This study finds that investors react positively to selected firms around the time of the release of the JUST 100 rankings, suggesting that the rankings are decision-useful. This study also finds that selected firms exhibit higher accounting quality and financial performance than their peers.

Rankings may not be free from bias because of JUST Capital’s ownership of an exchange-traded fund.

The findings validate the rankings as well as the methodology used by JUST Capital, as they show market participants value firms that engage in socially responsible actions through their commitment to positively impact five key stakeholder groups: employees, customers, communities, environment and shareholders.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that shows the importance of the JUST 100 rankings for investment decisions. Considering the growing push for companies to disclose environmental, social and governance (ESG) activities, this study provides evidence to support ESG disclosure regulations.