JOURNAL OF ACCOUNTING KNOWLEDGE
Year:2012 | Volume:2 | Issue:7|Papers Count:7

After the separation of management from ownership, and the emergence of the agency theory, the board of directors has been identified as the mechanism of internal control and governing means in firms. Hence, this study, attempting to provide a new approach to the importance, quality and quantity of the board of directors, investigates the impact of operations of a firm on the structure of board of directors. In this study, the sample consists of 60 firms listed in the Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) from 2000 to 2009. The statistical method of analysis utilizes the Logistic regression model and ordinary least squares regression model with panel data. The findings revealed that the scope of operation measures, namely firm size, firm age and debt ratios, didn’t significantly affect the structure measures of board of directors, including size of the board, percentage of outsiders in the board, appearance of one of the outsiders as the chairman of the board, and the presence of at least three outsiders in the board. However, the ownership percentage of institutional shareholders had significant and negative effect on the structure of board of directors. Also, type of industry didn’t have significant impact on the structure of board of directors in the studied firms.

This study investigates the implication of nominal financial reporting for firm's performance and stock prices under inflationary condition. This requires examination of the relationship between unrecognized inflation gains or losses as independent variable with each of variables for future operating cash flows, future cash flows from sale of assets and abnormal returns on portfolios from unrecognized inflation gains or losses as dependent variables. The independent variable was calculated by inflation adjustment algorithm (Konchitchki, 2009), and the relationship between independent and dependent variables was examined by the models of Barth, Cram, and Nelson (2001), Konchitchki (2009), and Fama and French (1993). Also, the hypotheses were tested, using Pearson statistical analysis method. Using data for 98 listed companies in Tehran Stock Exchange from March 2000 to February 2009, the results show the higher the unrecognized inflation gains or losses of a firm, the lower is expected to be the future operating cash flows. Moreover, such a firm tends to sell its fix assets and has lower stock returns in future.

This study investigates the relationship between conditional conservatism and the cost of equity capital. The conditional conservatism rate is measured, using Callen et al (2009) at firm-year level, and the impact of conditional conservatism on cost of equity capital at firm and portfolio level is studied, using the three Fama and French (1993) factor model. The data used consists of a sample of 82 firms that are publicly traded in the Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) in the period 2001-2009. A multi-variable regression model is used for testing of hypotheses in a cross-sectional and time series framework. The results from hypotheses testing show that there is a significant negative relationship between conditional conservatism and cost of equity capital, and that the higher the degree of conditional conservatism the lower is the firm’s cost of equity capital. The results also show that there is a positive relationship between conditional conservatism and portfolio’s cost of capital. This relationship is statistically significant for both the firms with medium and high conservatism portfolios, but not for the firms with low conservatism portfolio.

This paper examines the relationship between corporate governance and quality of reported earnings, using panel data analysis. The sample consists of 117 firms listed in Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) in the period of 1386-1388. Prior studies have used many substitutes for corporate governance, but this research is based on a multi-dimentional and composite approach to measure corporate governance. Also, quality of earnings is measured by seven metods. The empirical results show that the measure of corporate governance is 1) negatively correlated with accrual quality, earnings persistence, and earnings management and conservatism, 2) positively correlated with earnings predictability and earnings timeliness, and 3) and not correlated with value relevance measure of earnings. In other words, the relationship between earnings quality and corporate governance is not of one-dimentional link nature, and it is not easy to accept one of the monitoring and the assurance hypotheses with no respect to the other one. Furthermore, the disaggregation of corporate governance measure into some components reduces the explanatory power of the models. Finally, the relationship between corporate governance and various measures of earnings quality in different industries is not homogenous.

This study examines whether the target firms manage their earnings in the period leading to their acquisition upward or not, using data on a sample of 46 firms listed in Tehran Stock Exchange for three industries in the period 1382-87. In this study, discretionary accruals were used as the proxy for earnings management, and the modified Jones model under the balance sheet and cash flow approaches is utilized, regarding some modifications in the balance sheet approach. The results show that there were no significant difference between the discretionary accruals of target firms in the periods before and after acquisition, and no significant difference for discretionary accruals between the target firms in the period before acquisition and the firms in control group.

The main purpose of this study is to evaluate the power of income statement components in predicting net earnings and stock returns. To achieve this objective, changes in annual net earnings divided into changes in reported sales, gross profit and other expenses, and the predict ability and explanatory power of the general model of net income compared with the net income divided models. This study has been conducted by selecting 51 companies listed in Tehran Stock Exchange in the period 1387-1383. The results show that in prediction of future earnings and explaining stock returns, the change in sales, gross profit and other costs have higher predictive ability and more information content than the net earnings. And, changes in sales and gross profit have higher predictive ability and more information content than operating profits. Also, changes in operating income have more information content and higher predictive ability than net income. According to the results, it could be concluded that the devision of earnings components increases the predictive ability and information content of earnings.

This study examines the efficiency of Feltham-Ohlsen (1995) valuation model in the Tehran Stock Exchange, TSE, and attempts to identify the relationship between intrinsic company value and return, to determine the intrinsic value of company using their book value. The statistical population in this study includes all TSE accepted companies and the sample consists of 89 TSE companies from different industries, and the data covers the years 1998 to 2009 and is used in time series-cross sectional (panel data) regression model. Results show that the model is not able to determine the intrinsic value of the companies, and that the relationship between the ratio of intrinsic value to market value and the ratio of price to earning value is not statistically significant. In addition, the companies that have the least ratio of intrinsic value to market value are assessed in the market higher than their real value.