This chapter analyzes the role of financial accounting in the German financial system. It starts from the common perception that German accounting is rather 'uninformative'. This characterization is appropriate from the perspective of an arm's length or outside investor and when confined to the...

Earnings management erodes the usefulness of financial statements, because the typical result of cooking the books is the occurrence of earnings bubble that bursts sooner or later, causing stock price to dive. This paper explores the presence of earnings management in the case of companies...

Earnings manipulations are often revealed with significant lag. This usually entails dramatic share price' slide. Therefore investors should avoid/buy stocks with low/high earnings-quality. However, given the shortcomings of auditing, using this strategy requires application of the other (then...

An analysis of a unique proprietary dataset reveals that non-trivial proportions of directors, CEOs and CFOs in Swedish listed companies have been convicted of crimes. Based on prior literature, we argue that directors and senior executives with prior criminal convictions are more prone to take...

We examine the effect of lending banks' board representation (affiliated banker on board, or AFB) on conservative accounting. We argue that private information obtained through board representation enhances the monitoring and the influence of lenders and therefore reduces their demand for...

What are the costs and benefits of retaining the former CEO on the board? Corporate boards frequently debate this question as part of the CEO succession process. Like many governance issues, empirical evidence indicates that a number of factors are involved in and may drive this on-going...

The industrial revolution has given way to an age of computers, information and global competitions. Decisions are made more quickly and superior knowledge of products, management techniques & styles, skills, markets, methods, systems, procedures, human resources, policies, quality of work life,...

This paper examined the relationship between earnings management and performance of acquiring firms in Malaysia during period of 2004-2010. Earnings management measured by discretionary accruals derived from modified Jones model and firm's performance estimated by monthly Cumulative Abnormal...

We look at liquidity constraints and the financing of household investment in fixed assets. We find that rural households in our sample, especially the poor, seem to face liquidity constraints. The constraints are partially mitigated by kinship networks in the village. When we further analyze...

The primary objective of this study is to construct a valid and reliable instrument to quantitatively measure the quality of internal audit function via level of conformance by internal auditors towards the International Professional Practice Framework (IPPF). Two separate pilot tests were...