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This paper aims to examine whether external monitors (auditors and analysts) constrain earnings strings, an indicator of earnings management, and whether this monitoring is more effective after the implementation of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX), given the emphasis of SOX on improving auditing, financial reporting and the information environment.

Agency theory establishes the premise between external monitoring and earnings strings. Auditor tenure and number of analysts following provide measures for external monitoring quality. Using prior research, empirical models explaining the presence of an earnings strings and earnings strings trend are developed to test the hypotheses.

Pre-SOX, extreme auditor tenure, indicating lower quality external monitoring, is associated with greater earnings strings trend, and analyst coverage is associated with increased likelihood of earnings strings and greater earnings strings trend consistent with analyst pressure on management. More effective auditor and analyst monitoring occurs post-SOX in terms of reduced likelihood of earnings strings and earnings strings trend.

The authors provide evidence on how elements of external monitoring are associated with increased earnings strings pre-SOX. Further, they contribute to the debate on the impact of SOX on external firm monitoring and the overall financial information environment. By focusing on earnings strings, the outcome of earnings management, the authors provide a unique understanding of external monitoring that also provides insight on the overvaluation of equity and ultimate destruction of firm value. The evidence demonstrates how regulation has contributed to an improved financial reporting environment and external monitoring.

This paper aims to evaluate policymakers’ concerns about the lack of competition in highly concentrated markets for public company audits by examining the association between audit fees and the inequality of Big 4 market shares at both the USA national-industry and city-industry levels.

Using publicly available data, this paper uses regression analysis to examine publicly available data to test research hypotheses related to the association between audit market inequalities and audit fees at both the USA national-industry and city-industry levels.

The findings support a U-shaped association between national-industry inequality and audit fees. As inequality initially increases, fees decrease; however, as inequality becomes increasingly large fees increase. The city-industry level analysis shows the opposite pattern. The results are consistent with capacity constraints at the national-industry level that are less binding at the city-industry level.

This study provides evidence that market inequality has a non-linear association with audit price and contributes to the limited findings in industrial organization research on the importance of market share inequality in highly concentrated markets.

This study provides new insights into the growing body of research on audit market structure by documenting that national-industry and city-industry analysis provides different insights into the market structure. In addition, the sample period for this study (2004-2017) addresses the General Accounting Office (GAO) concern about the lack of a stable audit market in the period it examined (GAO, 2008, p. 94) and finds evidence of market structure effects not present in the earlier GAO studies (GAO, 2003, 2008).

The purpose of this paper is to investigate international variability in the pricing of accounting information using ex ante cost of equity capital estimates. Prior literature shows that financial statement amounts are relevant for investor decisions only when there is appropriate economic and legal infrastructure (Ball, 2001).

Accrual quality and accounting loss are focussed upon as indicators of firm risk in financial statements.

The evidence suggests that accounting information is factored into ex ante cost of equity capital in countries with strong economic and legal infrastructures but not in those with weak infrastructures. Findings support Ball’s notion that the role financial reporting plays in a capital market depends on the strength of economic and legal infrastructure.

Findings support Ball’s notion that the role financial reporting plays in a capital market depends on the strength of economic and legal infrastructure.

The purpose of this article is to study the impact of the related parties' transactions (RPTs) on firm value, and to identify the ownership and governance characteristics of companies that engage in this type of transactions.

The paper uses 3SLS simultaneous model carried out on a sample of 85 companies listed on the Paris Stock Exchange during the period 2002‐2005.

The results show that RPTs are mainly influenced by the voting rights held by the main shareholder, the size of the board of directors, the degree of independence enjoyed by the audit committee and the board of directors, the choice of external auditor, the debt ratio and the fact of being listed in the USA. Mainly the transactions carried out directly with the main shareholders, directors and/or managers that have a negative influence on firm value.

In future studies, it will be interesting to test the impact of the level of expertise as well as the level of qualification in the field of accounting and finance of the members of the French audit committees on the frequency of RPTs.

The current research complements prior studies on the RPT by showing that the frequency of RPTs can be damaging to companies and can destroy their market value.

The purpose of this paper is to answer the fundamental question about why the shares of property developers are traded at market discounts by focusing on property developers from Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore.

It measures market discount using market-to-book ratio (MTB) and specifies the relations between MTB and the hypothetical determining factors (revenue recognition policy, investment property measurement policy, related party (RP) transaction disclosures and economic rent) in the presence of relevant control variables.

This study finds that aggressive revenue recognition and investment property measurement policies increase market discounts, but that RP transactions generally contribute positively to reduce the market discounts of property developer shares. Specifically, RP transactions are value-enhancing only if property developers adopt a conservative revenue recognition policy, because markets sensibly see RP transactions that are part of an aggressive revenue recognition policy as earnings management for tunnelling by controlling shareholders, and hence react with discounts. It is also observed that when property developers generate insufficient profit to cover their cost of equity, this generally leads to their shares being traded at market discounts. However, an aggressive revenue recognition policy can reduce market discount if early recognition contributes positively to economic rent.

This study provides valuable evidence of the economic consequences (market discounts) of accounting choices on recognition and measurement, and the disclosure of accounting information. This is crucial to managers of property developers in managing their firm values when exercising accounting discretion.

This study provides empirical evidence on market discounts as they relate to property developers, which has been limited (past studies focus on property investment companies and real estate investment trusts).

The purpose of this study is to develop a new measure for discriminatory related party transactions (DRPTs). There are currently measures for such discriminatory transactions but the new measure has a strong theoretical basis and is less susceptible to measurement error.

This paper develops and tests a new measure for these discriminatory transactions. Type I and Type II error rates and the power of the new measure are compared with an existing measure using computer-simulated and real data.

The capital market sensitivity of the new measure is also tested and compared with the existing measure. The new measure is found to be superior.

The new measure of DRPTs has the potential to contribute to both further research on the impact of related party transactions and policy-making in relation to DRPTs.

This paper has developed and tested a new measure for DRPTs.

Although the academic literature provides extensive insight into the motivations for the unethical use of information technology in online classes, little is known about how perceived justice, the opportunity to cheat and spiritual legitimacy mitigate unethical behavior among young academics. The purposes of this study are two folds: first, to determine how perceived lecturers’ justice and opportunity to cheat may mitigate academic misconduct in online classes, and second, to evaluate the moderating effect of spiritual power on the relationship between perceived lecturers’ justice and opportunity to cheat and academic misconduct.

This research was conducted at universities in three Southeast Asia countries, including Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, with a total of 339 respondents. The research questionnaire was distributed using Google Forms. The analytical method used to test the research hypothesis is moderated regression analysis (MRA).

The findings of this study reveal that spirituality moderates the relationship between lecturer justice and the opportunity to cheat online. Even though the justice level of the lecturer is low, individuals with relatively high spirituality will show much less cheating behavior than when there is a low level of lecturer justice and a low level of student spirituality, and vice versa.

Cheating occurs when students develop an intention to cheat, which leads to actual involvement in cheating, meaning that theoretically, the findings extend the fraud triangle theory. In addition, the practical implications of this research are that lecturers need to conduct fair teaching, such as transparency of exam conditions, assessment, the right to an opinion and supervision during exams, consequently, the students cannot cheat. Spirituality is also an essential factor that can reduce online cheating, so instilling spirituality in specific courses is a fruitful solution.

The contributions of this study are twofold. First, this study gives testable theories on how spiritual help works. Second, this study offers tailored and more humanistic assistance, such as a mechanism that adjusts to the academic world’s usage of more positive technologies. This study contributes to the literature on online cheating in higher education across three Southeast Asian nations (Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand).

The fundamental change in accounting rules for equity-based compensation (EBC) instituted by SFAS 123, SFAS 123r, and IFRS 2 has allowed for new insights related to a variety of research questions. This paper discusses the empirical evidence generated in the wake of the new regulation and categorizes it into two broad streams. The first stream encompasses research on the changed use of EBC and the incentives provided. The second stream addresses how firms account for EBC, including the underreporting phenomenon and how it was affected by the mandatory recognition of EBC expenses. I discuss where research delivers unanimous findings versus contradictory results. Using these insights, I make recommendations for further research opportunities in the area of EBC.

The purpose of this paper is to advance supply chain network theory by applying theoretical and empirical developments in complex network literature to the context of supply chains as complex adaptive systems. The authors synthesize these advancements to gain an understanding of the network properties underlying efficient supply chains. To develop a suitable theory of supply chain networks, the authors look to mirror the properties of complex network models with real‐world supply chains.

The authors review complex network literature drawn from multiple disciplines in top scientific journals. From this interdisciplinary review a series of propositions are developed around supply chain complexity and adaptive phenomena.

This paper proposes that the structure of efficient supply chains follows a “scale‐free” network. This proposal emerges from arguments that the key properties of efficient supply chains are a short characteristic path length, a high clustering coefficient and a power law connectivity distribution.

The authors' discussion centres on applying advances found in recent complex network literature. Hence, the need is noted to empirically validate the series of propositions developed in this paper in a supply chain context.

If efficient supply chains resemble a scale‐free network, then managers can derive a number of implications. For example, supply chain resilience is derived by the presence of hub firms. To reduce the vulnerability of supply chains to cascading failures, it is recognized that managers could build in redundancy, undertake a multi‐sourcing strategy or intermediation between hub firms.

This paper advances supply chain network theory. It offers a novel understanding of supply chains as complex adaptive systems and, in particular, that efficient and resilient supply chain systems resemble a scale‐free network. In addition, it provides a series of propositions that allow modelling and empirical research to proceed.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of the presence of political connections on firm performance through related party transactions in Tunisia, a country where that is characterized by the Jasmin revolution in 2011.

The study uses a sample of nonfinancial firms between 2008 and 2014 listed on the Tunis Stock Exchange and uses generalized least squares on panel data.

First, the political connection and related parties' transaction enhances firm's market performance. Second, the study reveals that political connection moderates the relationship between the related party transactions and firm performance only in the period after revolution. Indeed, politicians seem to have used related party transactions to expropriate firms in a period of political instability. Finally, we show that politicians are more attracted by firms with higher market performance and with higher number of related parties' transactions.

The empirical findings contribute to the current debate on the benefits and costs of political connections in emerging economies. It shows that political connections enhance market valuation of firms. However, political connection costs appear during political instability period.

This study addresses the interaction between related party transactions, political connections and firm performance. It is the first study to test if the related party transactions are used as a tool by politicians to expropriate firms.