JOURNAL OF ACCOUNTING KNOWLEDGE
Year:2018 | Volume:8 | Issue:4 (31) |Papers Count:9

The purpose of this article is to examine the impact of sentiments and behavioral tendencies of investors on pricing of capital assets. For this purpose, the adjusted three-factor model of Fama and French has been used based on the evaluation criteria for emotions of the investor. This study has been done based on the information released by listed companies in Tehran Stock Exchange, in the period between 1389 and 1394, with the selected sample consisting of 141 companies. Results of testing hypothesis show an increase in the explanatory factor of pricing model of capital assets as well as each of its components by adding emotion indexes. Investor emotions indices used in this study includes financial turnover of shares in the market, ratio of days with uptrend to days with downtrend of the stock price and the ratio of spending stock dividend profit. The first and second indicators of investor emotions has a positive and significant relationship with the returns of stock portfolios and regarding the third index, no significant relationship was observed in the model; while, positive emotions compared to negative emotions have a distinct impact on asset pricing. Also, the first and second indicators of emotions impact the market factor of Fama and French model, all three indicators of emotions impact the factor of size of the company in Fama and French model and also the second and third indicators of emotions impact the factor of ratio of book value to market value of Fama and French model.

In the global financial crisis, managers are under pressure, and to avoid bankruptcy, they manipulate financial information or hide them to postpone financial distress, using their authorities in applying accounting standards and doing estimates and forecasts. This study investigates one of the most important factors affecting earnings quality, using seven criteria to measure earnings quality, including ex-post and ex-ante conservatism, value relevance, accruals quality, earnings persistence and earnings smoothing, as well as a zero-one dummy variable to introduce the absence or presence of global financial crisis, totally in the multivariate regression and panel data models. This study used data collected from a sample of 148 firms in the Tehran Stock Exchange in the years 2005 to 2015. Findings showed that the global financial crisis improves quality of earnings through positive impacts on some criteria of earnings quality, including earnings persistence and smoothing, and reduces quality of earnings through negative impacts on some other criteria, including conservatism, value relevance, accruals quality and earnings predictability. The findings also indicated that quality of earnings before the period of global financial crisis is more than that during the crisis.

Accounting standards are the principal factors in business environment affecting different areas, including accounting profession and auditors. In this study, the role of approaches to accounting standards setting (rule-based and principle-based standards) in the psychological characteristics of auditors has been investigated, using structural equation modeling, The data collection takes into account an accounting pseudo-experimental scenario that are accounting standards manipulation at two levels, rule-based and principle-based. The results showed that principle-based standards, compared to the rule-based standards, lead to higher levels of epistemic motivation and process accountability for auditors. Also, the results indicated that types of accounting standards have no significant effects on the evidence level requested by auditors, but, the principle-based standards increase the level of evidence indirectly through mediation of process accountability. Another findings showed that the process accountability directly affects the level of evidence requested by auditors. But, the results indicated that epistemic motivation has no significant effect on the request of level of evidence. In general, findings represented positive impacts of principle-based accounting standards on the process accountability and epistemic motivation for auditors. These confirm that principle-based approach should be considered more by standard-setters and policy makers in the fields of accounting and auditing.

The aim of this study was to examine the effects of stock return volatility as indication of environmental uncertainty on working capital accruals. This study is the applied one and uses Ex-Post Facto approach. In this study, according to the real option-based investment approach, it was predicted that high stock return volatility would reduce working capital accruals. A sample of 108 companies listed in the Tehran Stock Exchange in the period 2011 to 2014 has been selected to test the hypothesis. To compute some variables, the data of the years 2010 and 2015 have also been collected. The results showed that there is a negative relationship between the volatility of stock returns and working capital accruals, and financial distress of firms reduces the explanatory power of the relationship. One of the main reasons for reduction of the explanatory power of the negative relationship under financial distress could be the motivation of the transfer of risks by investors. Also, contrary to what was anticipated, high operating cycle does not increase the power of negative relationship between stock return volatility and working capital accruals.

The aim of this study is to examine the association between managerial overconfidence and the existence of important weak points in internal controls in financial reporting of the firms listed in the Tehran Stock Exchange, TSE. In other studies, there are evidences on the effects of managerial overconfidence on firms’ control of activities. Based on the tenets of overconfidence, it is expected that the overconfident managers keep on internal control at less effectiveness. This is because they overestimate their own ability, and believe they can control events and risks, which are actually out of their control. This study used data collected from a sample of 90 firms listed in the TSE in the period 2007 to 2015, to test the hypothesis in logistic and panel data regression models. Findings indicated that there exists positive significant relationship between the managerial overconfidence and weaknesses in internal control, and that these managers are not able to mitigate the negative consequences of ineffective internal contorols (inefficient investments and low future operating efficiency).

In the recent years, many companies in the Tehran Stock Exchange, TSE, revaluated their non-current assets and increased their capital value to do reforms in their financial structure and to exit from the inclusion of Article 141 of the Commercial Code. This, with regard to the inflation condition in the community, often increases firms’ capital values and changes financial statements that may cause auditors revalue their audit fees. This study aims at investigating the effects of revaluating non-current assets on audit costs of firms. In this study, a sample of 127 companies listed in the TSE was selected, in which 62 companies revaluated their non-current assets and 65 companies held their own historical value of non-current assets unchanged, all in the period 2010 to 2016, and then, the data was collected from financial statements of these companies. Findings showed that revaluation of assets leads to increase in audit costs. Also, the companies that reevaluate their own assets, compared to other companies, experience more audit costs.

The possibility of fraud in the issued financial statements, and its negative impacts on financial markets and the resulting reduction of investment have caused responsible monitoring organizations to detect the frauds and to move seriously against them. This study aimed to investigate the ability of the fuzzy approaches to fraud detection in financial reporting of the firms in the Tehran Stock Exchange. In this study, three hypotheses were considered. First, the Fuzzy decision tree classifier can detect fraud in financial reporting. Secondly, the Sugeno fuzzy classifier can detect fraud in financial reporting. Thirdly, there is a significant difference between the results of fuzzy decision tree classifier and Sugeno fuzzy classifier. These fuzzy approaches were programmed and used for testing the above hypotheses, using Matlab Software. The average accuracy of the Fuzzy decision tree classifier was 31/312, and of the Sugeno fuzzy classifier was 80/92. In other words, the first hypothesis was rejected and the second and third hypotheses were verified.