在之前的推送中，我们整理了2019年部分国际顶刊中使用DID研究方法的文章（TAR、JAE、JAR、JFE、RFS，点击阅读推送原文）。本次推送，我们针对2020年The Accounting Review发表的文章进行了更新，涉及分析师、CEO行为、资本结构、审计、盈余质量等多个话题。文章摘要如下。版权归原作者所有。

分析师

April Klein, Tao Li, and Bobo Zhang. 2020.Seeking Out Non-Public Information: Sell-Side Analysts and the Freedom of Information Act.The Accounting Review. 95(1): 233-257.

Shock：分析师收到FDA记录

A number of sell-side healthcare analysts gain access to information outside the purview of management through Freedom of Information Act requests to the Food and Drug Administration for records on factory inspections, complaints, and drug and medical device applications. Using a difference-in-differences methodology, we find that buy (sell) recommendations and upgrades (downgrades) earn higher (lower) stock returns over the year following the receipt of FDA records. We also examine the type of information revealed in FDA factory inspection reports, and find that analysts are less likely to downgrade and are less pessimistic in their recommendations than the consensus recommendation when the information contained in the FDA report is not particularly severe. Our findings are consistent with a subset of analysts utilizing non-public information channels independent of management to gain value-relevant information about their covered firms.

CEO行为

Matthew Ma, Jing Pan, and Stephen R. Stubben. 2020.The Effect of Local Tournament Incentives on Firms' Performance, Risk-Taking Decisions, and Financial Reporting Decisions.The Accounting Review. 95(2): 283-309.

Shock：CEO突然死亡

This study documents the existence of local employment preferences for corporate executives and examines how the compensation of executives' local peers affects their own performance, risk-taking decisions, and financial reporting decisions. We find that external hires of new CEOs (CFOs) are five (eight) times more likely to be from local firms than non-local firms. We also find that local tournament incentives—as proxied by the pay gap between an executive and higher-paid executives in the area—are associated with stronger performance, greater risk taking, and more financial misreporting. We find consistent results using a difference-in-differences analysis that exploits plausibly exogenous variation in local tournament incentives caused by the sudden death of a local CEO. Our findings are consistent with executives taking actions to compete for a promotion to a nearby firm with higher pay.

资本结构

David P. Weber and Yanhua Sunny Yang.The Debt-Equity Choice When Regulatory Thresholds are Based on Equity Values: Evidence from SOX 404.The Accounting Review. 95(2): 339-364.

Shock：2002年萨班斯法案

When larger market values of equity result in being subject to costly regulation, firms have incentives to shift their sources of financing toward debt and away from equity. We use the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) as a setting to provide evidence of such incentives. Smaller firms were granted several reprieves and eventually exempted from the internal control audit requirements of SOX Section 404, which many consider the most costly and onerous aspect of SOX. Using a difference-in-differences design, we show that relative to control firms, firms just below the regulatory threshold have increased propensities to issue debt, decreased propensities to issue equity, and increased leverage levels in the post-SOX period. These results are consistent with firms altering their financing choices to maintain their exempt status and demonstrate an economic consequence of regulatory regimes that are tiered by equity values.

盈余管理

Huang S, Roychowdhury S, Sletten E. 2020.Does Litigation Deter or Encourage Real Earnings Management?.The Accounting Review. 95(3): 251-278.

Shock：1999年美国第九巡回法庭降低了所在州内企业面临的诉讼风险

In this paper, we rely on an exogenous shock to examine the impact of litigation risk on real earnings management (REM). We conduct difference-in-differences tests centered on an unanticipated court ruling that reduced litigation risk for firms headquartered in the Ninth Circuit. REM increases significantly following the ruling for Ninth Circuit firms relative to other firms, consistent with litigation risk deterring REM. Additional analyses reveal that REM rises more following the ruling when firms issue more optimistic disclosures. The evidence is consistent with litigation deterring REM by constraining managers' ability to issue optimistic and misleading disclosures that can conceal the myopic and opportunistic motives underlying REM. We further document that an increase in REM in response to a decline in litigation risk is more pronounced when managers have higher incentives to manipulate earnings and governance mechanisms are weaker.

审计

Musaib Ashraf; Paul N. Michas; Dan Russomanno. 2020.The Impact of Audit Committee Information Technology Expertise on the Reliability and Timeliness of Financial Reporting.The Accounting Review. 95 (5): 23–56.

Shock：审计委员会有IT专家

We examine whether information technology expertise on audit committees impacts the reliability and timeliness of financial reporting. We find a reduction in the likelihood of material restatement, a reduction in the likelihood of information technology-related material weaknesses (which account for 55 percent of all reported material weaknesses), and more timely earnings announcements at firms with audit committee information technology expertise. These findings are robust to controlling for a firm's other information technology attributes, as well as when using entropy balanced samples, and we mitigate endogeneity concerns with evidence that our findings hold in a subsample of firms that all possess overall high-quality information technology. Finally, a difference-in-differences analysis, inclusion of firm fixed effects, and a falsification test largely support our assertion that the quality of financial reporting is significantly improved by the presence of an audit committee information technology expert.

Nemit Shroff.Real Effects of PCAOB International Inspections.2020. The Accounting Review. 95 (5): 399–433.

Shock：PCAOB国际检查

This paper examines the effect of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) international inspection program on companies' financing and investing decisions. Difference-in-differences regression estimates suggest that companies respond to their auditor receiving a “deficiency-free” inspection report by issuing additional external capital amounting to 1.4 percent of assets and increasing investment by 0.5 percent of assets. These effects are larger for (1) financially constrained companies and (2) companies located in countries where there is no regulator or the regulator does not conduct inspections. Further, the effect on financing decisions is stronger in countries with (1) low corruption, (2) strong rule of law, and (3) high regulatory quality. Descriptive evidence suggests that inspections increase the use of financial covenants in debt contracts, which is likely one of the mechanisms through which inspections generate real effects. This paper documents the value of PCAOB inspections in mitigating financing frictions for non-U.S. companies.

(来源:CJAR)

(作者:曹慧娟)