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This study analyzes earnings management among Brazilian public firms during the 2016 Presidential Impeachment.

The sample comprises, as a treatment group, 721 firm-quarter observations relating to Brazilian listed firms. It also considers a control group of listed firms from Mexico, which were not affected by the exogenous shock analyzed (i.e. the 2016 Presidential Impeachment in Brazil). The firms' quarterly financial data cover the period between 2013 and 2018.

Considering several proxies related to earnings management by accruals, the main findings suggest a negative relationship between the 2016 impeachment event and the level of discretionary accruals, suggesting that Brazilian firms tended to reduce their earnings management levels during the impeachment process. The results are robust whether the control group is considered or not.

This study brings new empirical evidence to the literature on accounting information quality about the role of the economic and political environment in earnings management, especially in weak institution countries characterized by institutional voids and higher levels of corruption.

This paper aims to investigate the mechanisms through which social media news consumption across different platforms leads to opinion polarization in society. To this end, the authors draw from cultivation theory to examine whether social media news consumption imparts a mainstreaming or resonance effect. Media consumption imparts a mainstreaming effect if frequent users, regardless of their social identity, develop homogenous attitudes about issues, whereas resonance is at play if there is a differing cultivation effect on various social groups depending on their relatability of life experiences.

The authors conduct the study in the developing context of India, using a population survey dataset from 2019. Regression-based mediation and moderation analyses were carried out to test the hypotheses.

The findings reveal that resonance is the most prominent mechanism through which social media news consumption cultivates opinion polarization, contrary to the mainstreaming effect imparted by television. Further, WhatsApp use was found to strengthen the polarizing effect of overall social media news consumption, while YouTube use weakened the cultivation of polarization.

The paper unearths how social media news consumption influences the opinion polarization of various social groups differently. The authors also find the differential effect of specific platform use. These findings have the potential to inform policymakers and developers about how to mitigate the detrimental effects of platform-based political persuasion.

This study offers significant contributions. First, the authors explain social media-induced polarization using the novel theoretical lens of cultivation. Second, the authors find that social media and television news consumption differ in their polarizing effects. Third, the authors find that while WhatsApp use amplifies the polarizing effect of social media news consumption, YouTube use weakens it.

The main goal of this paper is to investigate whether there is long-memory behavior in the CBOE Brazil ETF volatility index (named here VIXBR). As structural breaks may create a spurious long-range dependence, the presence of structural breaks is also gauged.

The study considers the period from October 2011 to March 2021, using daily data. To test the long-memory behavior, three empirical approaches are adopted: GPH, ELW and robust GPH (RGPH) estimator. To estimate the structural break points adopted to date the subsamples, the ICSS algorithm is used.

Results considering the total period (TP) and subsamples show that the breaks did not create a spurious long-memory behavior and together with the rolling estimation, reveal strong evidence of the long-range dependence in the CBOE Brazil ETF volatility index. The higher degree of persistent of the VIXBR series suggests an extended period of increased uncertainty that agents need consider when making their investment decision.

As possible extension of this study is to investigate the behavior of long memory and structural breaks for different frequencies (weekly, monthly, among others).

The presence of long-range dependence in the CBOE Brazil ETF volatility index reveals that the past information is important for the predictability of risks, and therefore, can help to protect against market risks, which has important implications regarding the future decisions of economic agents (for example, policy makers and investors).

Brazil is an emerging capital market (ECM) that has attracted a great deal of attention from investors and investment funds seeking to diversify its assets. This paper contributes to the empirical financial literature, by studying the long-memory behavior of the CBOE Brazil ETF volatility index, considering possible structural breaks. To the best of knowledge, this has not been done so far.