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The purpose of this study is to examine the financial autonomy that affects the financial accounting information quality of public organizations. This study also tests the impact of the financial autonomy on support from leadership. How this impact has affected elements of accounting information systems such as hardware, software, communications technology and chief accountant to support providing the quality of the financial accounting information.

The research model is in the SEM form and measurement models are reflective scales so this study applies the PLS-SEM analysis technique on the Smart PLS 3.2.7 software to test the research hypotheses. Analytical data is collected through survey questionnaires with observed variables measured using the typical 7-point Likert scales. The result obtained after cleaning the data includes 164 Vietnamese public organizations with the different levels of the financial autonomy.

This research has three primary findings: firstly, FA has a positive direct effect on FAIQ and SL. Secondly, SL influences FAIQ through four mediate variables including AM, HW, SW and CN. Finally, SL also acts as a mediate variable in the relationship of FA and FAIQ.

This is one of the first empirical studies to examine the role of financial autonomy in leadership support to improve the quality of the accounting information in the public sector in the context of the Vietnamese government is promoting the financial autonomy of public organizations.

The main objective of this study is to investigate whether adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) improve the quality of financial reporting in Nigeria. Financial reporting quality was measured in terms of fundamental qualitative characteristics such as relevance and faithful representation and enhancing qualitative characteristics such as understandability, comparability, verifiability, and timeliness as contained in the conceptual framework. The study was conducted on a sample of 162 companies listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange. A compound measurement tool in form of an index was developed to comprehensively assess the quality of financial reporting based on information disclosed in the financial statement of the selected companies. From both univariate and multivariate analysis, I found strong evidence suggesting that accounting standard used in the preparation of financial statement have significant influence on the quality of financial report of the reporting entity. The result persists for all the three models (overall financial reporting quality, fundamental, and enhancing qualitative characteristics) tested in this analysis. The result also revealed that apart from firm age and firm growth, most of the firm-specific variables investigated have statistically significant influence on the financial reporting quality.

Australia's early adoption of international financial reporting standards (IFRS) in 2005 was influenced by the argument that the quality of financial reporting would be improved as a result. The purpose of this paper is to provide an historical review of quality in relation to financial reporting in Australia by investigating how the qualitative characteristics of relevance, reliability, comparability and understandability developed in Australia between 1961 and 2004.

This paper reviews the relevant academic and professional literature during the period as well as reporting on a survey of academics and others who contributed to debates about the characteristics of accounting.

In Australia the notion of “quality” can be captured by relevance, reliability, comparability and understandability although the names and descriptions of these elements have been debated over a 40‐year period. The paper contends that the exact meanings of those elements in relation to financial reporting remain unresolved, in spite of their adoption by the AASB Framework (2004) as the qualitative characteristics of accounting information.

Future research into the qualitative characteristics in Australia, which include questions such as the extent to which certain reporting practices or standards meet the requirements of one or more of the qualitative characteristics could be based on the historical development of these characteristics, as described in this paper. This paper also identifies critical areas that require further dialogue between researchers, standard setters and users of general purpose financial statements.

This paper describes links between a comprehensive list of attributes of accounting information that have been considered important over the past 40 years, and the four qualitative characteristics adopted by the AASB Framework. It also provides a history of contemporary accounting dilemmas, and reveals a lack of resolution to issues associated with each of the qualitative characteristics.

This paper aims to analyze the quality of financial information using financial and economic ratios, assessing if the quality is affected by financial reporting standards. A group of factors that allow proving of the capacity of ratios to measure accounting information quality – and thus facilitating the analysis process to the groups of users – is also determined.

Using a sample of 111 companies from the Madrid Stock Exchange and 32 from Eurostoxx50, descriptive analysis and non‐parametric variance analysis were carried out during the period 2005‐2007. At the same time, reduction data techniques, specifically principal components analysis (PCA), were performed to detect the underlying main factors for the year 2007.

There is an indication that financial information quality is affected by financial reporting standards. Additionally, there is a group of factors that show an alternative to analyze accounting information.

This study provides evidence to measure financial information quality and the results can be beneficial to accounting users, as well as contributing to the literature related to this topic.

Empirically, this study shows that accounting information is affected by financial reporting standards.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the association between corporate governance mechanisms and quality of forward-looking information in the Chinese stock market which presents a mandatory disclosure environment for forward-looking information.

Using sales forecasts to proxy forward-looking information and using precision and accuracy to measure the quality of information disclosure, the authors investigate the impact of corporate governance attributes on the precision and accuracy of sales forecasts made by listed Chinese firms in their 2010 annual reports, using logistics and ordinary least squares regressions.

The authors find good corporate governance has a positive and significant impact on the precision choice of sales forecasts disclosure. Firms with good corporate governance are more likely to disclose more precise sales forecasts than providing qualitative discussions on firms’ sales trend. In addition, good corporate governed firms are found more likely to provide precise non-financial information. The authors also find that good corporate governance is positively associated with making more conservative sales forecasts disclosure. However, the authors find no significant relationship between good corporate governance and smaller forecast error.

The study makes significant contributions to corporate disclosure literature. The authors investigate the determinants of the quality of forward-looking information in a mandatory disclosure regime while most forward-looking information disclosure literature have been conducted in a voluntary-based disclosure environment. The authors examine whether in a mandatory disclosure regime, corporate governance mechanisms can play a positive role in precision choices and accuracy of forward-looking information. Further, the study is the first to examine corporate governance and the quality of non-financial forward-looking information (sales target and production goal). The research findings therefore extend forward-looking information disclosure research from financial information to non-financial information.

The empirical findings will provide regulators with evidence on the quality of forward-looking information in a mandatory disclosure regime and the influence of corporate governance on forward-looking disclosure. The properties of forward-looking information disclosure in China should be of interest to policy makers, investors and financial analysts in other international jurisdictions.

The study investigates forward-looking information in a mandatory disclosure regime while most extant forward-looking information studies have been conducted in a voluntary disclosure environment. The study is the first to examine the quality of non-financial forward-looking information such as operational goals and plans, and to investigate the association between the quality of non-financial forward-looking information and corporate governance mechanisms. The research findings extend forward-looking information disclosure research from quantitative financial information to quantitative non-financial information.

The purpose of this research paper is to provide a model for reporting quality of financial information based on behavior of listed companies in Tehran Stock Exchange which is based on structural equation modeling approaches.

This study uses applied research and postsemi experimental method of data collection in the field of proofing accounting research with deductive–inductive approach. The statistical population of this study includes the sample of 128 listed companies in the Tehran Stock Exchange between 2007 and 2017. The behavioral characteristics of managers (hidden variables) are measured by observable variables of myopia, opportunistic behavior and overconfidence of managers. Reporting quality of financial information is also investigated based on the scores accrued to each company and the announcement published by the Tehran Stock Exchange based on the companies' rating in terms of the quality of reporting and proper notification.

After insuring the acceptable fitness of the measurement pattern and the structure of research in both approaches, structural equations modeling and regression, the results indicate that there is a significant negative relationship between the behavioral characteristics of managers and the reporting quality of financial information.

Accountants have a critical and difficult responsibility of dealing with transactions and presenting them in the form of financial reports that can be used by interest groups to assess the performance of companies. This critical responsibility becomes meaningful when professional and ethical behaviors are the basis for disclosure of financial reporting. Based on the behavioral characteristics of disclosing financial reporting in emerging capital markets such as Iran, this study can be successful in developing new and theoretical literature in this field.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze empirically the fundamental role that information asymmetry plays in the functioning of an efficient capital market as mediator in the relation between corporate disclosures and cost of capital.

By using a sample of 1,260 international non-financial listed companies in the period 2007-2014.

The findings suggest that high-quality financial and social disclosures quality reduce the cost of capital, by decreasing information asymmetry. In other words, the authors find evidence of the mediator role of information asymmetry in the relation between corporate disclosures and the cost of capital. These results are also controlled for differences on accounting standards and other institutional factors.

The central assumption is that the demand for corporate disclosures that reduces the information advantages of some investors (who are more informed) arises from agency conflicts and these information differences in turn, determine the cost of capital. This paper is the first attempt to study, jointly, the effects of decreasing information asymmetries by corporate disclosures on the cost of capital in an international setting. In addition, the authors focussed on both financial and social disclosures, creating empirical proxies whose validity for the analysis has been evidenced.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze whether gender diversity on board and financial expertise on audit committee affect accounting conservatism in banking sector. Additionally, the authors focus on the effects of board characteristics on bank earnings quality and examine their effects on earnings persistence.

The authors use a large sample of 159 banks from nine different countries from the period 2004-2010. The authors study whether the differences in the timeliness of earnings to bad news and earnings quality across governance structures of banks are driven by differences across investor protection and bank regulation levels in banks.

The findings confirm the monitoring role of both female and financial experts, noting a positive effect of them on accounting conservatism and earnings quality in banks. According to the institutional characteristics, the results suggest the complementary role of banking regulation and investor protection levels in these effects, noting that in contexts of higher regulatory and greater investor protection environments, gender diversity and financial expertise on boards have more influence on the conservatism and earnings quality of banks.

The authors contribute to both the accounting quality literature and the corporate governance literature by identifying board characteristics that are associated with higher conservatism and quality of earnings in banks around the world. In addition, this study also contributes to the ethics literature by highlighting the benefits of gender diversity and financial expertise in upholding the integrity of financial reporting. Moreover, this paper adds to prior literature about board of directors and accounting quality by identifying additional complementary factors – bank regulation and investor protection – and by focusing on a specific industry, the banking industry.

Big Data analytics (BDA) and its implications for the accounting profession continue to be a key issue that requires more research and evaluation. As a result, the purpose of this study is to evaluate the impact of BDA on financial reporting quality, as well as to assess the accounting challenges associated with Big Data. It provides qualitative evidence from Canada.

This study used a qualitative approach to ascertain the thoughts and perceptions of auditors, financial analysts and accountants at Canadian audit and accounting firms in BDA and its impact on financial reporting quality, using semi-structured interviews. To obtain their consent to participate in the interview, 127 auditors, financial analysts and accountants from Canadian audit and accounting firms were initially approached. The final number of respondents was 41, representing a response rate of 32%.

The authors’ findings underscored the relevance of Big Data and BDA in affecting financial report quality and revealed that BDA had a significant effect on improving financial reporting quality. Big Data improves accounting reporting and expert judgment by providing professional. In summary, participants agreed that when analytical methods in Big Data are implemented effectively, businesses may possibly achieve a variety of benefits, including customized goods, simplified processes, improved risk assessment process and, finally, increased risk management.

The authors’ findings indicate that BDA may help predict investment returns and risks, estimate future investment opportunities, forecast revenues, detect fraud and susceptibility early and identify economic growth opportunities. As a result, auditors, financial analysts, accountants, investors and other strategic decision-makers should be aware of these findings to make informed choices.

Big Data has become the norm in recent years; accountants and other decision-makers have struggled to analyze massive amounts of data. This limits their capacity to profit from such data even more. Therefore, this study is motivated by the lack of research on Big Data’s influence on financial report quality.