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I find that median wealth plummeted over the years 2007–2010, and by 2010 was at its lowest level since 1969. The inequality of net worth, after almost two decades of little movement, was up sharply from 2007 to 2010. Relative indebtedness continued to expand from 2007 to 2010, particularly for the middle class, though the proximate causes were declining net worth and income rather than an increase in absolute indebtedness. In fact, the average debt of the middle class actually fell in real terms by 25 percent. The sharp fall in median wealth and the rise in inequality in the late 2000s are traceable to the high leverage of middle-class families in 2007 and the high share of homes in their portfolio. The racial and ethnic disparity in wealth holdings, after remaining more or less stable from 1983 to 2007, widened considerably between 2007 and 2010. Hispanics, in particular, got hammered by the Great Recession in terms of net worth and net equity in their homes. Households under age 45 also got pummeled by the Great Recession, as their relative and absolute wealth declined sharply from 2007 to 2010.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze and examine the role of accounting conservatism on firm investment behavior in China.

By combining a developed theoretical framework and empirical study, this paper examines the impacts of accounting conservatism on firm investment. The sample and data are all collected from Wind and CAMAR databases.

The paper finds that the association between accounting conservatism and capital expenditure is significantly positive when inside capital is not enough to use for investment, suggesting that conservatism can expend the level of investment by decreasing information asymmetry and cost of capital; however, the association between accounting conservatism and capital expenditure is significantly negative when inside capital is enough to use for investment, suggesting that conservatism can curtail the level of investment by mitigating the interest conflicts between management and outside shareholders and decreasing agency costs. Additionally, the paper finds that the severity of information asymmetry and agency problem affects the role of accounting conservatism on firm investment behaviour, and the association between accounting conservatism and capital expenditure is weaker for firms with ultimate ownership controller as local government or individuals.

This is the first paper to analyze and examine the impacts of accounting conservatism on firm investment in China directly. The findings are also useful to explain the awkward predicament found by prior literature.

This study aims to investigate the impact of mandatory corporate social responsibility (CSR) spending legislation on the earnings management strategies of firms.

The authors use panel data regression models to analyze the data for this study. This study covers the post-legislation period, which spans over five years from the financial year ending March 2015 to the financial year ending March 2019.

The results show that firms manipulate accounting measures to avoid breaching the cut-off criteria for mandatory CSR. In particular, the results show that firms operating around the operating revenue threshold misclassify operating revenue as non-operating revenue. In contrast, firms operating around the net worth and net profit thresholds do downward real and accrual earnings management. These results are consistent with several robustness measures.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that examines the impact of mandatory CSR spending on earnings management.

This study examines how creditor interventions after debt covenant violations affect corporate tax avoidance. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find that creditor interventions increase borrowers' tax avoidance. This effect is concentrated among firms with weaker shareholder governance before creditor interventions and among those with less bargaining power during subsequent debt renegotiations. Our results indicate that creditors play an active role in shaping corporate tax policy outside of bankruptcy.

We investigate the interaction of debt covenants and tax accounting on the adoption of Financial Interpretation No. 48 (FIN 48). We examine how firms respond to the potential tightening of covenant slack upon FIN 48 adoption and whether these actions are penalized by creditors and anticipated by equity markets. We find that upon FIN 48 adoption, the majority of sample corporate borrowers increase their tax reserves and reduce equity. Firms close to debt covenant violation were even more likely to increase tax reserves upon FIN 48 adoption; however, the size of the adjustment was relatively smaller, suggesting that the FIN 48 standards limited, but did not eliminate, firms use of discretion in reporting uncertain tax positions to avoid costly covenant violations. For firms near net worth debt covenant violation, the act of decreasing equity upon FIN 48 adoption imposes real economic costs, as the average cost of debt increased by 43 basis points. Finally, we extend prior research on the market response to FIN 48 by showing how the market response to FIN 48 adoption is a function of debt covenant slack and tax aggressiveness. Specifically, the cumulative abnormal return at the FIN 48 exposure draft release date is negative only for tax aggressive firms that are close to debt covenant violation.

Punitive damages is a controversial topic in the legal profession and in the field of economics. This chapter explores the economics of punitive damages as they relates to corporate defendants. The economic difference between large corporations and other potential defendants, such as individuals or smaller closely held companies, causes the effects of a punitive award to be different. In some circumstances, these differences raise significant questions as to the appropriateness of punitive damages when imposed on large corporations.

This chapter aims at examining financial distress issue by designing a comprehensive model to explain and predict financial distress in Egypt. This comprehensive model incorporates accounting ratios, market-based ratios and macroeconomic ratios. The sample of the existing research includes all the listed firms in two main sectors: basic resources and chemicals. Using logistic regression model, the results showed that adding market ratios and macroeconomic ratios enhances the predictability of the model and accounting information are not sufficient to explain financial distress.

The New Zealand Government has progressively strengthened its balance sheet position since the mid-1990s, other than for the four years immediately following the global financial crisis and the Canterbury earthquakes. This paper describes the nature and the forecast and actual fiscal impacts of the COVID-19 response, and identifies the transparency mechanisms which reveal these impacts. It also expresses a viewpoint on the implications of the COVID-19 response for the future resilience of the Government's fiscal position.

The paper draws on the suite of official budgetary documents to demonstrate both the transparency of the disclosures on the COVID-19 impact and the substance of the forecast and actual fiscal impacts.

The paper reveals the change in the long-term fiscal aspirations of the New Zealand Government from one of achieving and maintaining a significant net worth buffer, to one which accommodates in the long-term a markedly smaller buffer and lower level of net worth.

The public financial management system in New Zealand is notable for its transparency. The Government's response to the pandemic is used to illustrate the nature and extent of that transparency.

To empirically study the performance of large retailers in terms of the strategic profit model and the retail performance index over time.

This study looks at how well the largest public US retailers performed financially from 1982 to 2001. Several measures are employed, including sales and profit growth, profit margins, asset turnover, return on assets, financial leverage, and return on net worth. The performance of Wal‐Mart is broken out.

As a group, the largest public US retailers have not performed very well across a number of measures. They have not been “high performers.” Wal‐Mart has outperformed other very large retailers for virtually every financial measure. It has been a “high performer” by not losing its edge as it has grown.

Only public retailers were included in the study. Retailers reported financial data using different fiscal years. The federal government converted its data from SIC to NAICS codes during the time frame of the study; the data were converted based on a model from Retail Forward.

As the largest firms seek to heighten their marketplace concentration, they have to be careful not to fall into a growth trap. They need to be more devoted to driving up their financial performance.

The paper reports the results of a comprehensive longitudinal study of the largest public retailers, and focuses on applying two under‐researched retail performance tools: the strategic profit model and the retail performance index.

This study investigates important factors that should be used by lenders in risk‐rating their farm customers. These factors predict actual farm performance and debt repayment ability. Linear and logistic regression models are used to identify the debt‐to‐asset ratio as a major predictor of repayment ability. In addition, the rate of asset turnover and family living expenses are strong predictors of farm performance. The results are tested over several time periods to verify the robustness of the predictors.