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To study the nature of covenants for planning control from a legal perspective; to examine the legal mechanisms by which different parties may be bound by covenants and to illustrate the better legal meaning for the idea of “planning by contract”.

The legal principles in Hong Kong relating to how land covenants may affect land owners are used in analyzing the concept of “planning by contract”, which conveys a meaning of an origin from the concept of privity of contract. Examples by reference to real life cases are used to illustrate how planning control through covenants has affected land owners.

Covenants relating to planning control in land leases affect not only the original government lessees but also all subsequent owners to the land. The operation of planning control through covenants is more than a concept based on operation of contract.

The analysis is largely based on the law in Hong Kong. The extent to which the analysis may apply elsewhere is a matter depending on the legal framework in the operation of land covenants at different places.

Land owners and facility managers should fully understand the mechanism by which land covenants may bind land owners even if they have never agreed to the covenants and that the development potential of the property may be seriously affected.

This paper will serve as an aid to land owners and facility managers to understand the mechanism by which land covenants may affect the land and its development potential.

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.

Both the Austrian and Bloomington Schools emphasize the dispersal of information to the level of individual agents. An underappreciated difference is the Bloomington emphasis on the moral psychology of agents and its relation to covenant. Covenant refers to a habit, a sense of obligation to consider the interests of the other in decision making, and a commitment to do so that is not easily or unilaterally broken. This chapter seeks to elaborate the lineage of covenant in constituting political order and its implications for the moral psychology of agents and artisanship. This exploration raises issues of metaphysical foundations as they relate to values and to the Hobbesian–Aristotelian divide in starting points. An application to the environmental crisis, with particular reference to vested interests promoting disinformation, obfuscation, and doubt about anthropogenic climate change, suggests value in emphasizing covenant.

Decision-making rationality is said to be bounded by managers’ cognitive capabilities. Recent studies indicate that accounting functions evolved to augment the cognitively bounded human brain in handling complex economic exchanges. The neuroscience discipline suggests that human brains have the ability to implement “automatic” processes of positive versus negative emotional stimuli to make rational decisions. Neuroscientific evidence shows that the activations in the ventral striatum decrease with negative emotional information/motives and increase with positive emotional information/motives. The authors, hence, argue that our understanding of the decision-making rationality in financial and managerial decisions could be enhanced by using a functional neuroimaging approach.

Decision-making rationality has been focal in debt covenant violation and earnings management research. The contracting theory predicts a relationship between managers’ decisions and the proximity of violating debt covenants. However, no prior research has investigated brain activities associated with the evaluation of debt covenant violation and earnings management. Meanwhile, in another strand of research, there is an extensive prior literature concerning the consequences of managers’ decisions and the use of accounting information in relation to their evaluative style, i.e., supervisory style. The authors argue that the relationship between the proximity to debt covenants violation and earnings management incentives is contingent upon managers’ supervisory style. However, no previous research has examined the impact of the supervisory style on earnings management in the context of the proximity to debt covenants violation and other earnings management incentives.

In this research note, we argue that neuroaccounting could be relied on to examine the relationship between the proximity to debt covenants and earnings management, contingent upon managers’ supervisory style, by capturing brain activities. The adoption of the neuroscience functional neuroimaging approach in this field should contribute to the understanding of managers’ behaviors and provide implications for research and practitioners. The goal of this research note is to provide a new avenue for future research in this field.

This paper contributes to the literature as follows. First, it examines if option and stock compensations raise creditor's risk, and which one is more important than the other. Second, it explores if CEO's compensation interacts with CEO overconfidence to raise creditor's risk. Third, it investigates how banks use different loan terms to alleviate their credit risk.

This study used advanced regression analysis and use of generalized methods of moment methodology.

The results show that option compensation is more important than stock compensation in raising credit risk; option compensation interacts with CEO overconfidence, giving rise to a much higher credit risk; and covenant usage is more important than other loan contract terms in mitigating credit risk given that covenant use could not be substituted away by using other loan contract terms such as increasing interest rate, reducing principal or shortening loan duration. This paper has practical implications for credit markets.

The main implication is that hand-collect data are available up to 2010.

It informs creditors the potential sources of loan risk emanating from option rather than stock incentives; it informs creditors that option incentive interacts with CEO overconfidence rendering the credit risk bigger than expected, and it informs creditors the importance of using covenants vis-à-vis other loan contract terms for mitigating compensation and overconfidence risk.

Banks are alerted to the risk due to the interaction between overconfidence and compensations, implying that overconfident managers remunerated with options compensations are more risky than overconfident managers who are not remunerated as such.

This paper is original: (1) The authors show that option compensation is more risky than stock compensation from viewpoint of creditors. This has not been assessed. (2) Interaction between managerial compensation and managerial overconfidence has not been assessed before. (3) Use of different loan contract terms to alleviate risk from overconfident managers (who are prone to over investment but who are innovative according to the literature) has not been evaluated.

This purpose of this paper is to examine whether disciplines outside law demonstrate consensus on the attributes of home, whether, to the extent that there is consensus, property law supports those attributes, whether those attributes can be reconciled with working from home, and how far property law is able to address uncertainty regarding the regulation of working from home.

This paper identifies conceptions of “home” from non-law disciplines. It examines the extent to which property law in England and Wales supports or challenges those conceptions. It examines the extent to which working in homes disrupts or distorts those conceptions. It assesses the extent to which property law engages with that disruption.

A lack of clarity in how “home” is defined and perceived in non-law disciplines, and a tendency in those disciplines to produce static and decontextualized notions of home is reflected in inconsistent property law approaches to protection of important “home” attributes. Recognition by property law of the prevalence of home working is relatively undeveloped. An under-appreciation of “context” dominates both cross-disciplinary perceptions of home, and the support which property law provides to those perceptions.

This paper focuses on conceptions of “home” drawn from disparate disciplines and seeks to find consensus in a diverse field. It concentrates on the regulation by covenants of the use of homes for non-domestic purposes in England and Wales.

Suggested alterations to property law and practice, and to the imposition and construction of covenants against business use, might better reflect the prevalence of working from home and clarify the circumstances in which homes can properly be used for work purposes.

This paper identifies that in its inconsistent recognition of “home” attributes in general, and in the lack of established principles for regulating the use of homes for business purposes in particular, property law offers insufficient certainty to occupiers wishing either to work at home, or to resist doing so. It identifies that a broader cross-disciplinary investigation into the inter-relationship between living spaces and working spaces would be beneficial.

The originality of this paper lies in its examination from a property law perspective of established cross-disciplinary conceptions of home in the context of the recent growth of working in homes.

To report inflated operating performance indicators, such as operating revenue and operating profit, managers vertically reposition revenue and expense items inside the income statement. This study aims to investigate the relationship between credit market incentives and these practices.

This study examined a sample of 1,592 Bombay Stock Exchange-listed companies from 2009 to 2021 and tested them using panel data regression models. The propensity score matching method and different measurements of classification shifting practices are used to validate the results.

The conclusions drawn from the empirical data show that firms prefer revenue shifting over expense shifting to prevent debt covenant violations. It shows that the firm’s classification-shifting practices are driven by credit market incentives. This finding is consistent with the notion of positive accounting theory that firms engage in classification shifting (earnings management) to avoid violation of debt covenants. Further, the firm’s preference for revenue shifting is in line with the ease-need-advantage-based shifting framework where firms choose the shifting tool based on costs and constraints associated with each tool.

The finding suggests that if managers heavily rely on revenue shifting to avoid debt covenant violations, the firm may end up breaking these covenants based on its actual operating performance. Managers may use aggressive accounting techniques to prevent covenant violations, which can be a warning indicator of financial difficulties or operational problems. It highlights the necessity for creditors and investors to carefully evaluate a company’s financial stability outside of the financial statements that are publicly disclosed. Authorities should create separate forensic accounting standards for auditors to check revenue items and stop the corporate misfeasance of revenue shifting.

The study is among the earlier attempts to provide empirical evidence on credit market incentives behind classification shifting practices. It is the first study that documents the substitution relationship between classification shifting forms for avoiding violation of debt covenants.

The study aims to investigates which form of classification shifting is preferred by firms to avoid the violation of debt covenants and whether the higher-audit quality constraints the shifting practices of firms incentivized to avoid covenant violations or not.

A sample of 1,644 Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE)-listed firms during the period 2009–2021 has been used in this study and tested through panel data regression models. Two forms of classification shifting, namely expense shifting and revenue shifting have been taken into account. The findings are validated through the propensity-score matching technique.

The findings deduced from the empirical evidence demonstrate that firms prefer revenue shifting over expense shifting to avoid covenant violations, consistent with the notion of the ease-need-advantage-based shifting framework, where firms are found to prefer a shifting tool with greater relative advantage. Further, the author finds that superior audit quality has a constraining effect on expense shifting, but not on revenue shifting, indicating the partial effectiveness of high-quality auditors in curbing the corporate misfeasance of classification shifting. These results are robust to the problem of endogeneity and self-selection bias.

The paper provides new evidence on debt market incentives behind classification shifting, where firms are found to substitute classification shifting forms to avoid covenant violations. Further, the study is among pioneering attempts to investigate the impact of audit quality on revenue shifting and document the non-constraining effect.

Two types of opportunism, managerial and competitive, are described. Contractual covenants that control these types of opportunism are used when they are likely to occur, i.e., when there are obstacles to monitoring management behavior and when returns to starting new firms are large. These ideas are subjected to empirical test. The relationship between managers in new firms and venture capitalists is receiving increased attention in the literature (Norton and Tenenbaum 1990; Sahlman, 1988). The determinants and implications of several attributes of these relationships have been examined, including the percentage of a new firm's equity held by venture capitalists, the number of seats on the board controlled by venture capitalists, and the post‐funding activities of venture capitalists (e.g., helping the new firm raise additional capital, contacting customers, replacing management) (Barney, Busenitz, Fiet, and Moesel, 1989). While our understanding of the relationship between managers in new firms and venture capitalists is growing, one particularly important component of that relationship has yet to receive significant attention in the literature: the details of the formal contractual arrangement between managers in a new firm and venture capitalists. Often called the “terms and conditions” of the relationship between managers and venture capitalists, these contractual details specify the rights and obligations of both managers and venture capitalists throughout their entire relationship in a series of covenants (Fiet, 1991). Among other items, contractual covenants can specify limits on capital expenditures, limits on managerial salaries, limitations on raising additional outside capital, technology non‐disclosure agreements, and conditions for forcing a change in managing and liquidating the deal. The purpose of this paper is to understand the determinants of the formal contractual arrangements between managers in new firms and venture capitalists.