JOURNAL OF ACCOUNTING KNOWLEDGE
Year:2019 | Volume:9 | Issue:4 (35) |Papers Count:11

Objective: This research aim at identification of the factors affecting the stock price synchronicity and their ranking in a sample of 1030 years-companies from the Tehran Stock Exchange in the years 2006 to 2015. Methods: This research takes a sample that was selected through systematic elimination method, and examines the effects of macroeconomic variables (economic growth, inflation and unemployment rate), corporate governance system (institutional shareholder, concentration of ownership, and independence of the board), audit quality, agency problems (free cash flow, complexity of operations and information asymmetry), and company information characteristics (profit sustainability, conservatism, earning smoothing and opaque) on stock price synchronicity based on data mining methods (including neural network model and C5 tree model). Results: The results showed in corporate governance, the focus of ownership (based on the percentage of free float) and the independence of the board; in agency problems, the information asymmetry; in company information characteristics, the conservatism and opaque; and from macroeconomic variables, the economic growth have the most impact on the stock returns synchronicity. Also, the information asymmetry has the most impact on stock return synchronization based on different criteria. Conclusion: Given that the stock price synchronicity is considered the indication of stock price informativeness (the extent of access to specific company information) and efficiency of capital allocation, therefore, it is recommended to the capital market activists to pay special attention to the factors affecting this variable to improve their decisions.

Objective: The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of political connections on stock price crash risk in 120 companies listed in the Tehran Stock Exchange in the period 2011-2016. Methods: To test the research hypotheses, a panel data model was used, and to measure the stock price crash risk, two indicators of negative conditional return skewness and down-to-up volatility of monthly returns were used. Results: The results showed that political connections have positive impacts on stock price crash risk. This is because the executives show a good image of the position of firms by hoarding bad news and/or hiding that. This behavior of managers in the long run will lead to stock price crash. The results also showed that the positive impact of political connections on stock price crash risk is more severe in the companies with high information asymmetries. Conclusion: Political companies are more inclined to make opportunistic use of events than the other companies. As a result, it is suggested to investors and users of financial statements to gain more knowledge about company's political relationships than the stock price in a business unit, because political action may be against the ultimate goal of the shareholders.

Objective: This study examined the effects of investor sentiment index on excess return in the Fama-French five-factor model, in the companies listed in the Tehran Stock Exchange in the period 2009 to 2015. Methods: Data collection was based on document mining and referral to databases, and data analysis was performed using inference method and Stata and Eviews software. To test the research hypotheses a Panel data model was used. Results: The results showed that the investor sentiment index plays an important role in capital assets pricing, and supports this role of the index in creating excess return and price formation. Conclusion: Attention to the factors such as investor sentiment, besides the fundamental factors, can have significant effect on the decisions of investors and other users, regarding challenges of the efficient markets hypothesis.

Objective: The purpose of this study is to assess the acceptability and the importance of the determinants of compensations for the board of directors in Iranian companies, referring to the views of the board members. The determinants of the compensation of the board of directors were specified in the paper of Karami and Jabari (2018). Methods: The extent of agreement of the board of directors with the determinants of compensations for the board, and the views of the board members about the importance of main factors of the determinants of compensations were determined, using questionnaires and five-point Likert scale. The research data on acceptability of the determinants of reward was analyzed using the T-test of a single-sample binomial. Also, for comparing the importance of the main determinants of compensations, the mean of the data was compared with one way ANOVA. Results: The members of the board of directors of the company are agree with considering the achievement of annual goals, changes in company risk, company size, intensity of industry competition, industry hard work, the probability of depriving the board of directors of social rights, rewards of similar companies and legal constraints in determining the compensation of the board of directors. Conclusion: According to the board members of the Iranian companies, the compensation of the board of directors should be determined with regard to the extent and the state of achieving the annual goals of company.

Objective: This study shows cost stickiness and income smoothing in the cement industry occur in response to managerial caution and motives. The reason for choosing the cement industry is the specific nature of costs and production costs in this industry that may affect the managerial motives, and then, the management of profits. Methods: This research is descriptive and experimental and takes the financial data from 2007 to 2016. Assuming that the cement industry managers were susceptible to some misleading behaviors in financial reporting due to excess supply of cement in the domestic market over the study years, this study examined the relationship between cost stickiness and profit smoothing in this industry. Results: The results showed that there is no negative and significant relationship between cost stickiness and income smoothing in the cement industry, and that it may be resulted from management distorting behavior to reduce costs stickiness by income smoothing. The results also suggested that the two variables do not have negative and significant effect on each other. Conclusion: It is expected that there is negative relationship between the two managerial events. However, due to the certain conditions of the cement industry, this relationship did not observed.

Objective: Firm’ s business strategy is an effective factor in investment efficiency and determining capital investment levels. Defender and prospector strategy as the strategy at the two edges of the business strategy spectrum proposed by Miles and Snow (1978) exposes firms at different levels of investment, monitoring, and management discretion, which have many implications for management investment decisions. The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of business strategy on firm’ s investment efficiency Methods: Data of 119 companies listed in the Tehran stock exchange (TSE) in the period 2001 to 2015 has been obtained from Rahavard Novin news, financial statements and Codal Site of the TSE, and multinomial logistic regression model was used to test the research hypotheses. Results: Findings showed the firms that follow prospector and innovator strategy, invest in the highly risky projects and have higher probability for over-investment decisions. Whereas, the firms follow efficiency-oriented defender strategy are more likely to have under-investment decisions. Conclusion: In the firms following defender strategy, lower levels of managerial discretion, precise monitoring and fewer investment requirements lead to under-investment decisions. On the other hand, in the firms following prospector strategy, more managerial discretion, less stringent monitoring and massive investment requirements lead to over-investment decision.

Objective: Individual characteristics of chief executive officers, CEOs, such as reputation and job security may eclipse their behavior and types of decisions in the organization, and thereby affect the transparency of financial reporting. In this research, the influence of reputation and CEOs’ job security on the transparency of financial reporting has been examined. Taking into account research constraints, 110 companies accepted in the Tehran Stock Exchange, TSE, over the period 2010-2016 have been surveyed. Methods: To measure the reputation variable we used the media coverage of CEOs, to measure the variable of CEOs’ job security we used the two indicators of sales volatility coefficient and CEOs’ tenure, and to measure financial reporting transparency we used a multidimensional criterion covering a wide range of concepts related to the transparency. Data collection source consists of companies' financial statements, reports of board activities and independent auditor, as well as the news agency affiliated to the TSE. In this study due to controlling the effects of years and industry, fitting of model was done in a cross-sectional framework, and then, robust standard error method was used to test the hypotheses. Results: The results showed that the CEOs’ reputation has positive significant impact on the transparency of financial reporting. Also, there is a positive non-significant relationship between the variables of sales volatility coefficient and the CEOs’ tenure as the indicators of job security and transparency of financial reporting, respectively. Finally, the results showed that reputation and job security (sales volatility coefficient) have positive and significant effect on transparency of financial reporting, simultaneously. Conclusion: According to the results of this study, it is suggested investors and financial information users pay attention to the reputation of CEOs, and if necessary, to the reputation and CEOs’ job security, simultaneously, in assessing the transparency of financial reports of the TSE companies.

Objective: Regarding the theory of life cycle, companies in different stages of their life cycle have financial and economic indicators and certain behaviors. That is, the financial and economic characteristics of a company are influenced by the stage of life cycle of the company. Considering this, this study aimed at assessing the effectiveness of company ownership and the diversity of the company in company's life cycle. Methods: The sample consists of 127 companies accepted in the Tehran Stock Exchange in the period 2011-2016. In this study, to test the hypotheses, the analysis of variance was examined, and to compare the mean of variables, the LSD test and SPSS software were used. Results: Research findings showed there are significantly differences among ownership structures in the different stages of company's life cycle. That is, the differences among the structure of ownership in the company's growth phase are more marked by maturity and decline. Also, the results showed the diversity of activities of the company at the maturity stage is more varied than at the stage of growth and decline. Conclusion: The findings indicated companies at the maturity stage are considered with special interests by the public and government, and are controlled by institutional stockholders. Also, these companies have more diversification because of their higher stability.