Taking the "Broadband China" programme as a quasi-natural experiment, we intend to explore the effect of information technology infrastructure (Hereinafter, ITI) on earnings management strategy. Our results show that with the office location city selected as the pilot city, the firm will...

We examine whether business groups' influence on cash holdings depends on ownership. Group affiliation can increase firms' agency costs or benefit firms by providing an internal capital market, especially in transition economies characterized by weak investor protection and difficult external...

This paper examines the effect of using different option valuation models to calculatethe fair market value of Executive Stock Options (ESOs) granted to executivedirectors of UK firms. Our key objective is to demonstrate empirically that somecompanies will have greater incentive and benefit from...

We value UK executive stock options (ESOs) as American options that areawarded conditional on the probability of the holders achieving some performancecriteria. Unlike the standard Black and Scholes (BS) model, which is universally usedboth in the literature and practice, this provides a more...

We document accounting quality improvements following voluntary IFRS adoption.However, we find no evidence of such improvements subsequent to mandatory adoptionby firms that resist IFRS adoption. We exploit a unique setting in Germany where firmscould voluntarily adopt IFRS before mandatory...

Previous studies of relative performance evaluation (RPE) for executive compensations in Western developed markets have produced mixed findings. This is partly because the dispersion of share ownership in Western capital markets does not closely correspond with the single-principal/multi-agent...

We examine the impact of mutual fund ownership on stock price informativeness in China. Existing evidence shows that stock price informativeness is low in China, and attributes this to firms' lack of disclosure incentives under the weak investor protection institutional environment. Mutual funds...

There is growing evidence in the finance literature that media coverage can influence security pricing by facilitating news dissemination and reducing informational frictions even if it does not provide new information. This study examines the role of media coverage in the well-known foreign...

We examine the impact of state ownership on share price informativeness by using the unique setting of the Split Share Structure Reform in China. This reform abolishes the trading restriction of shares held mainly by state shareholders, which in turn renders their wealth more sensitive to share...