Business strategy, market competition and earnings management: Evidence from China

The Influence of Administrative Division Adjustment on Enterprise Earnings Management: A Quasi-Natural Experiment on City—County Consolidation

City–county consolidation is a common measure used by many cities to promote urbanization. This study develops the theoretical transmission mechanism, “city-county consolidation intensifies competition in the enterprise market improves the earnings management level of enterprises,” to analyze the influence of city–county consolidation on enterprises’ earnings management. An empirical analysis using the difference-in-differences (DID) method was conducted on data of industrial enterprises from 1999 to 2006. The results show that city–county consolidation promotes motivation for the use of enterprises’ earnings management. Second, city–county consolidation significantly intensifies enterprises’ downward earnings management behavior. Third, following city–county consolidation, non-state-owned enterprises are more strongly motivated to implement earnings management than state-owned enterprises. Fourth, city–county consolidation only significantly impacts the earnings management of enterprises affiliated with counties; it does not significantly impact the earnings management of those affiliated with central, provincial, or municipal governments. Therefore, this study provides empirical evidence from the perspective of market competition, which has important reference significance for urbanization development to improve national governance capacity by optimizing administrative divisions.

The Relationship between Dividend Policy and Earnings Quality: The Role of Accounting Information in Indonesia’s Capital Market

This study provides empirical proof that the positive impact of high accrual quality is the ability to accurately predict the future return with a positive sign. In the capital market, better prospects are commonly indicated by regularly and routinely implementing a high-yield dividend policy. This study uses dividend policy as a moderated multiple regression, which plays a critical role in achieving a high obedience to accounting standards. The causal research involved 154 of the companies listed on the Indonesia Capital Market and 384 observations in the industrial manufacturing sector for 2015–2020. By mulling over the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, and predicting the future market using zero growth with no assumed growth in the future, this empirical study shows that dividend policy is critical when minimizing opportunity behavior. This research provides a mapping of the decision tree model as an implication of game theory because of the interactive feedback between the earning quality and future market value. A sign such as “good” news significantly stimulates the perception of optimistic investors, with no negative manipulation and accruals. It paves the way for investors to strictly control and monitor strategic decisions to obtain significant improvement in prospects.

Earnings management, business strategy, and bankruptcy risk: evidence from Indonesia

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of accrual earnings management and business strategy to bankruptcy risk. Multiple Least Square (MLS) regression and robust regression of M-Estimator regression are performed on financial data of 1,068 non-financial firms listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX). The result indicates that there is no relationship between earnings management and bankruptcy risk, while firms that implement either one of two generic business strategies of cost leadership or differentiation, significantly mitigate the risk of bankruptcy. The effect of earnings management to bankruptcy risk is essential for external stakeholders, such as investors and creditors, to assess bankruptcy risk, financial capability, and credit worthiness of a firm, while business strategy effect on bankruptcy risk benefits internal stakeholders, such as managers, in formulating strategies to deal with going concern issues.

Product market competition, regulatory changes, ownership structure and accounting conservatism

Purpose

This study aims to examine the impact of various dimensions of product market competition on accounting conservatism particularly in the wake of regulatory changes and varying ownership structures in China.

Design/methodology/approach

This study examines impact of product market competition on accounting conservatism by using conservatism measure of Khan and Watts (2009) and measures for important dimensions of competition such as competition intensity, non-price competition and competition from existing rivals and potential entrants.

Findings

The findings suggest that competition intensity and non-price competition result in higher conservatism. This study also advocates that industry leaders exhibit lower conservatism as compared to industry followers. Moreover, the authors document positive association between competition from existing/potential rivals and accounting conservative. These findings reveal that regulatory changes (International Financial Reporting Standards adoption) influence the effect of various dimensions of competition on conservatism. The authors also propose that financial reporting practices of state-owned enterprises are not influenced by competition. However, competition affects financial reporting (conservatism) when institutional or managerial ownership is higher.

Originality/value

The authors document that strategic considerations shape conservative financial reporting decisions of the managers. This study also advocates that when regulatory changes affect the influence of competitive pressure on the conservative reporting decisions of the mangers. Findings also suggest that unlike state ownership, institutional as well as managerial ownership affects the influence of competition on managerial decisions like conservative financial reporting. These results are robust to various alternative measures of conservatism.

Hedge fund managers and deceit: is the accusation of performance manipulation valid?

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether there is significant evidence that hedge fund managers engage in deceptive manipulation of their reported performance results.

Design/methodology/approach

A model of hedge fund performance has been developed using standard regression analysis incorporating dependent lagged variables and an autoregressive process. In addition, the extreme bounds analysis technique has been used to examine the robustness and sensitivity of the explanatory variables. Finally, the conditional influence of the global stock market’s returns on hedge fund performance and the conditional return behavior of the Hedge Fund Index’s performance have been explored.

Findings

This paper begins by identifying a model of hedge fund performance using passive index funds that is well specified and robust. Next, the lag structure associated with hedge fund returns has been examined and it has been determined that it seems to take the hedge fund managers two months to integrate the global stock market’s returns into their reported performance; however, the lagged variables were reduced from the final model. The paper continues to explore the smoothing behavior by conditioning the dependent lagged variables on positive and negative returns and find that managers are conservative in their estimates of positive performance events, but, when experiencing a negative result, they seem to attempt to rapidly integrate that effect into the return series. The strength of their integration increases as the magnitude of the negative performance increases. Finally, the performance of returns for both the Hedge Fund Index and the passive indices were examined and no significant differences between the conditional returns were found.

Research limitations/implications

The results of this analysis illustrate that hedge fund performance is not all that different from the performance of passive indices included in this paper, although it does offer investors access to a unique return distribution. From a management perspective, we are reminded that we need to be cautious about hastily arriving at conclusions about something that looks different or feels different from everything else, because, at times, our preconceived notions will cause us to avoid participating in something that may add value to our organizations. From an investment perspective, sometimes having something that looks and behaves differently from everything else, improves our investment experience.

Originality/value

This paper provides a well-specified and robust model of hedge fund performance and uses extreme bounds analysis to test the robustness of this model. This paper also investigates the smoothing behavior of hedge fund performance by segmenting the returns into two cohorts, and it finds that the smoothing behavior is only significant after the hedge funds produce positive performance results, the strength of the relationship between the global stock market and hedge fund performance is more economically significant if the market has generated a negative performance result in the previous period, and that as the previous period’s performance becomes increasingly negative, the strength of the relationship between the Hedge Fund Index and the global stock market increases.

Competitive pressure and managerial decisions

Purpose

This study aims to examine the impact of product market competition (PMC) from existing rivals and potential market entrants on earnings quality (EQ) in China.

Design/methodology/approach

This study examines the impact of PMC on EQ by using the EQ measure of Kothari et al. (2005), and it uses measures for competition from existing and potential rivals. This study analyzed Chinese firms for the period of 2000-2014 and also examined the impact of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) adoption and state ownership on the relationship between PMC and EQ.

Findings

This study found a positive relationship between PMC and EQ. It also documents that competition from existing rivals does not improve EQ by reducing real activity manipulation, but competition from potential entrants does. The findings propose that market competition from existing rivals is a relevant factor for determining EQ before and after IFRS adoption, but competition from potential entrants improves EQ only after IFRS adoption. Moreover, the results suggest that market competition plays no role in improving the EQ of state-owned enterprises (SOEs).

Originality/value

The results support the argument that PMC acts as a governance mechanism and influences managerial decisions regarding financial reporting. Our study also helps to understand the impact of change in the regulatory regime, i.e. IFRS adoption, on the relationship between PMC and EQ. This study also helps demonstrate the impact of competition on management decisions with respect to the EQ of SOEs.