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This study reviews and discusses the accounting literature that analyzes the role of auditors and enforcers in the context of fraud.

This literature review includes both qualitative and quantitative studies, based on the idea that the findings from different research paradigms can shed light on the complex interactions between different financial reporting controls. The authors use a mixed-methods research synthesis and select 64 accounting journal articles to analyze the main proxies for fraud, the stages of the fraud process under investigation and the roles played by auditors and enforcers.

The study highlights heterogeneity with respect to the terms and concepts used to capture the fraud phenomenon, a fragmentation in terms of the measures used in quantitative studies and a low level of detail in the fraud analysis. The review also shows a limited number of case studies and a lack of focus on the interaction and interplay between enforcers and auditors.

This study outlines directions for future accounting research on fraud.

The analysis underscores the need for the academic community, policymakers and practitioners to work together to prevent the destructive economic and social consequences of fraud in an increasingly complex and interconnected environment.

This study differs from previous literature reviews that focus on a single monitoring mechanism or deal with fraud in a broadly manner by discussing how the accounting literature addresses the roles and the complex interplay between enforcers and auditors in the context of accounting fraud.

This paper examines the effects and root causes of client influence within the valuation profession in Kenya.

This study adopted a mixed research design incorporating a survey and experiment of registered and practising valuers in Kenya and interviews of key informants from registered and practising valuers, valuers' clients (commercial banks) and professional bodies.

The study found that client influence negatively impacts the valuation profession, contributing to inaccurate valuation outcomes, and it exists because of the valuation environment, represented by limited and unreliable information in Kenya and many other developing countries.

This study makes a critical contribution to the empirical literature as it introduces new insights into the impacts and causes of client influence by demonstrating how the valuation environment, characterised by poor information, contributes to client influence in Kenya, which is typical of many other developing countries.

The purpose of this study is to extend the Fraud Diamond Theory to celebrity Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs) and investigate their post-Initial Public Offering (IPO) stock market performance.

After obtaining a sample of celebrity SPACs from the Spacresearch.com database, fraud risk characteristics were obtained from Lexis Nexus searches. Buy and hold abnormal returns were calculated for celebrity SPACs versus a small-cap equity benchmark for time intervals after IPO, and multiple regression analysis was performed to examine the relationship between fraud risk features and post-IPO returns.

Celebrity SPACs exhibit Fraud Diamond characteristics and significantly underperform a small-cap stock portfolio on a risk-adjusted basis after IPO.

This study only examines celebrity SPACs that conducted IPOs on the NYSE and NASDAQ/AMEX and does not include those that are traded on the Over the Counter Bulletin Board (OTCBB).

Celebrity endorsement of SPAC vehicles attracts investors who may not be properly informed regarding the risk characteristics of SPACs. Accordingly, investors should be warned that celebrity SPACs underperform a small-cap equity portfolio and exhibit significant elements of fraud risk.

The use of celebrity endorsement as a marketing device to attract investment in SPACs has regulatory implications.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to examine the fraud risk characteristics and post-IPO performance of celebrity SPACs.

This paper aims to examine the extent of ethical values information disclosure on the top 100 Malaysian and Indonesian companies’ annual reports using coercive isomorphism under the institutional theory.

Using the content analysis, the presence or exclusion of ethical values information disclosed on 100 Malaysian and Indonesian companies’ annual reports using a newly developed Ethical Values Disclosure Index is carried out.

The results of the analysis found that Indonesian companies on average disclosed 31 items under study compared to 27 items disclosed by the companies in Malaysia. The results suggest that Indonesian companies are more vigilant in the code of ethics, companies policy on ethical issues, monitoring program and accountability, ethical performance, ethical infrastructure and organizational responsibility aspects, whereas their Malaysian counterparts are better in reporting governance and integrity committee or board of directors.

The findings may not be applicable to other countries in the same region, nevertheless, revealed the importance of adequate ethical values disclosure in determining the level of ethical behavior.

Companies in Indonesia are coercively pressed by various influential stakeholder groups to address ethical issues. The less disclosure regarding corporate ethical behavior may indicate that unethical practices continue to be a problem in the Malaysian corporate sector.

This paper adds to the literature by examining the elements of ethical values adapted mainly from the professional bodies that regulate the accounting profession and other organizations using the institutional theory, particularly in two countries.

The increased capital requirements and the implementation of new liquidity standards under Basel III sparked various concerns among researchers, academics and other stakeholders. The question is whether Basel III regulation is ideal, that is, adequate to deal with a crisis, such as the 2007–2009 global financial crisis? The purpose of this paper is threefold: First, perform a stress testing exercise on the US banking sector, while examining liquidity and solvency risk indicators jointly under the Basel III regulatory framework. Second, allow the study to cover the post-crisis period, while referring to key Basel III regulatory requirements. And third, focus on the resilience of domestic systemically important banks (D-SIBs), which are supposed to support the US financial system in times of stress and therefore whose failure causes the entire financial system to fail.

The authors used a sample of the 24 largest US banks observed over the period Q1-2015 to Q1-2021 and a scenario-based vector autoregressive conditional forecasting approach.

The authors found that the model successfully produces accurate forecasts and simulates the responses of the solvency and liquidity indicators to different real and historical macroeconomic shocks. The authors also found that the US banking sector is resilient and can withstand both historical and hypothetical macroeconomic shocks because of its compliance with the Basel III capital and liquidity regulations, which consist of encouraging banks to hold high-quality liquid assets and stable funding resources and to strengthen their capital, which absorbs the losses incurred in a crisis.

The authors developed a framework for testing the resilience of the US banking sector under macroeconomic shocks, while examining liquidity and solvency risk indicators jointly under Basel III regulatory framework, a point not yet well studied elsewhere, and most studies on this subject are based on precrisis data. The authors also focused on the resilience of D-SIBs, whose failure causes the failure of the entire financial system, which previous studies have failed to examine.

Motivated by rapidly increasing CEO age in the USA, the purpose of this study is to analyze the effect of CEO age on financial reporting quality and consider the moderating role of clawback provisions.

This study uses a data set of 18,492 US firm-year observations from 2003 to 2019. Financial reporting quality is proxied with accruals-based and real activities earnings management measures, and with financial statement irregularities, measured by applying Benford’s law to financial statement line items. A number of sensitivity tests are conducted including the use of an instrumental variable.

The results provide evidence that financial statement irregularities are more prevalent when CEOs are older, and they suggest a complex relation between CEO age and real activities earnings management. The results also suggest that the effect of CEO age on financial reporting quality is moderated by the presence of clawback provisions which became mandatory for US-listed firms in October 2022.

This study is the first, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, to consider the effect of CEO age on financial statement irregularities and earnings management. This study has important implications for stakeholders evaluating the determinants of financial reporting quality, for boards of directors considering CEO age limitations and for policymakers considering mandating clawback provisions, which recently occurred in the USA.

This study examines how the presence of labor unions affects a firm’s pay disparity between executives and employees and its financial statement comparability.

It uses firm-level labor union data in Korea and applies regression analyses to a sample of 1,776 firm-year observations from 2004 to 2008.

The authors find that unionized firms have a smaller pay disparity between executives and employees than non-unionized firms, suggesting that labor unions place pressure on the pay structure. Unionization also lowers financial statement comparability, which helps managers of unionized firms maintain information asymmetry. Further, this negative relationship between unionization and financial statement comparability is stronger in non-chaebol firms, implying that they are more motivated than chaebol firms to reduce their financial statement comparability in response to the presence of labor unions. In addition, the negative relationship between unionization and financial statement comparability is pronounced in profit-making firms, firms with less analyst following, firms with fewer foreign investors and firms in more competitive product markets.

The finding that firms adjust comparability in response to labor unions interests regulators and policymakers, who emphasize the role of comparability in providing usefulness to information users.

The findings add to the existing literature on the effect of labor unions on firms' pay structures and accounting choices.

The purpose of this study is to consider the limitations of traditional finance and to provide an overview of the challenges associated with the developing area of sustainable finance. In the context of multiple global systemic threats to humanity, the author argues that societal values must play a prominent role in calling for comprehensive government policy and activating the fund allocations required to safeguard the stability of multiple societal systems.

This study integrates research results from several disciplines to show that value-based finance is essential for ensuring that information acquisition, government policies and fund allocations support the stability of multiple systems on which society depends. The discussion is informed by research that documents massive uncertainty in planetary and biological processes requiring urgent action.

Traditional finance allows prioritization of financial returns at the expense of environmental and social stability with potentially catastrophic and irreversible consequences. To safeguard the stability of societal systems, fund allocation decisions by individuals and organizations must prioritize societal values, as they relate to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the science needed to achieve them.

This study provides a novel view of the critical importance of societal values in finance given growing global threats to the stability of multiple, interconnected systems. It offers a unique perspective by drawing on research results from multiple disciplines to highlight an essential role for science-based information related to societal values in the engagement and fund allocation decisions of all market participants operating under extreme uncertainty.

This study empirically demonstrates a contradiction between pillar 3 of Basel norms III and the designation of Systemically Important Banks (SIBs), also known as Too Big to Fail (TBTF). The objective of this study is threefold, which has been approached in a phased manner. The first is to determine the systemic importance of the banks under study; second, to examine if market discipline exists at different levels of systemic importance of banks and lastly, to examine if the strength of market discipline varies at different levels of systemic importance.

This study is based on all the public and private sector banks operating in the Indian banking sector. The Gaussian Mixture Model algorithm has been utilized to classify banks into distinct levels of systemic importance. Thereafter, market discipline has been observed by analyzing depositors' sentiments toward banks' risk (CAMEL indicators). The analysis has been performed by employing the system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) to estimate models with different dependent variables.

The findings affirm the existence of market discipline across all levels of systemic importance. However, the strength of market discipline varies with the systemic importance of the banks, with weak market discipline being a negative externality of the SIBs designation.

By employing the Gaussian Mixture Model algorithm to develop a framework for categorizing banks on the basis of their systemic importance, this study is the first to go beyond the conventional method as outlined by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

The purpose of the paper is to assess the systemic risk in the new energy stock markets of China.

This paper first uses the VaR method to study individual stock market risks. It then introduces the DCC model to capture the dynamic conditional correlation among the new energy stock markets.

The paper shows a generally upward trend of the stock market risk over time in the recent decade. Among all the markets considered, the solar power market demonstrates the highest risk, closely followed by the wind power market, while the hydropower market exhibits the lowest risk. Furthermore, the average dynamic conditional correlations among the new energy markets stay high during the period under investigation though daily correlations vary and significantly declined in 2020.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first of its kind to study the systemic risk within the new energy stock market context. In addition, it not only investigates individual new energy stock market risks but also examines the dynamic linkages among those markets, thus providing comprehensive and unprecedented evidence of systemic risk in China new energy markets, which have useful implications for both regulators and investors.