Journal of Empirical Research in Accounting
Year:2020 | Volume:9 | Issue:34|Papers Count:15

A rhetorical use of narratives is important in order to understand quantitative information. Writing tone is using positive rather than negative words in a qualitative text. Writing tone management is choosing such a writing tone level in a qualitative text which is incommensurate with concurrent quantitative information (Huang et al, 2014). Writing tone management may be used for strategic or informative motives. When a firm's basic information is more appropriate than provided quantitative information due to limitations in accounting standards, writing tone management may be employed for informative functions. However, writing tone management may be used for strategic functions in order to change perception of users about a firm's basic information. The main purpose of this research is to investigate whether writing tone management can indicate the effects of strategic motives of managers to mask poor future performance. The other purpose is to investigate the relation between writing tone management and future financial performance. The sample consists of firms listed in Tehran Stock Exchange for the period from 2008 to 2015. To test hypotheses, the correlation method and multiple linear regression analysis are used. The findings show a significant negative relation between writing tone management and future financial performance. Therefore, managers use writing tone management for strategic motives and in order to mask poor future performance.

This research investigates the relation between philosophical mentality and educational success of accounting students. The sample consists of 202 and 198 accounting students of governmental and Islamic Azad universities, respectively, over the period from 2015-2016. The research data is collected through questionnaires from students. To test the hypotheses, Equality of two means test and Correlation test using multivariate regression are applied. Results show that philosophical mentality is effective on educational success of accounting students in degree of bachelor; however, it is more effective on educational success of master accounting students in governmental universities than Islamic Azad universities. Also, findings from multivariate regression analysis indicate that educational success in bachelor degree of accounting field is a function of interest level to the field, diploma type and philosophical mentality, and in master degree of accounting field is a function of university type.

This study aims to investigate the effects of accounting and nonaccounting indices on financial distress prediction and also to compare parametric and non-parametric methods. Therefore, the sample consists of 211 distressed firms selected by special distress criteria and 211 healthy firms listed in Tehran Stock Exchange during 2006-2015. This study applies 32 accounting and 20 non-accounting indices and uses 2 parametric methods including Logistic Regression and Multivariate Discriminate Analysis and 7 non-parametric methods including Support Vector Machine, Artificial Neural Network, Decision Tree (with 4 algorithms) and Bayesian Network to predict financial distress. The results show that the models extracted from accounting indices have significantly more predicting accuracy than those from non-accounting indices, and adding non-accounting indices to the models based on accounting indices does not significantly increases their predicting ability. Also, since the average predicting ability of non-parametric methods is more than parametric ones, this difference is not statistically significant.

Fraudulent reporting means intentional providence of false and misleading reports. Paragraph 7 of Iranian Accounting Standard No. 1 considers the board of directors as responsible for financial statements providence, however, managers may provide the firm's reports including the report of the board of directors, with fraudulent incentives. One of the theories explaining the managerial decision-making methods based on their personality traits (risk taking and risk aversion) is the Cumulative Prospect Theory (CPT). Based on this theory, fraud incentives will be formed in managers' mind when they feel their performance will go away from the reference point they have already created in their minds. This study determines an index with more than 90% accuracy for assessing and detecting the risk of fraud in the board's report, focusing the report text and using two data mining methods including decision tree and machine learning methods. Then, the index is used to examine whether the manager incentives for using high fraud risk reporting methods follow the pattern presented in cumulative prospect theory. The results indicate that managers' fraud incentives in Iran are not consistent with CPT.

This study is aimed to examine the relation between internal control disclosures level and earning quality. Accounting earning is one of the most important elements of financial reporting and since internal control disclosures improve financial reporting quality, it can improve earning quality too. To measure internal control disclosures level, this study, using leng and ding (2011) and Kwame Agyei-Mensah (2016), examines each firm annual report in order to calculate internal control disclosures Index. Earning quality is measured using discretionary accruals absolute value. This study begins in 2013 because "The Internal Controls Rule" for the firms listed in Tehran Stock Exchange and Farabourse firms was approved by Securities and Exchange Organization in 2012. The Statistical population is firms listed in Tehran Stock Exchange during the period 2013 to 2016 and the sample consists of 424 year-firm observations. Results show that there is a positive (direct) relation between internal control disclosures level and earning quality.

This study uses a sample comprising 2642 observations of data from firms listed in TSE over the period from 2001 to 2016 in order to find empirical evidence that normal accruals process follow a piecewise linear model with respect to sales change. The main motivation of the study is to highlight this nonlinearity as a source of systematic measurement error because common standard accrual models assume a linear relation between level of accruals and sale changes. According to the theoretical framework of the study, the linear relation of working capital accruals and sale changes will transform into a piecewise linear change in less sale periods because of change in working capital management policy and conditional conservatism. To find the empirical evidence, piecewise linear models are fitted with 14 different dependent variables including accruals measures, accruals components, operating cash flows and earnings, for 17 industries. The research findings show that when sale declines, the average growth of negative working capital accruals is higher than expected, as subsequent of the unexpected increases in operating current liabilities. Also, the other research variables reaction model to sales declines are consistent with the expected model as a result of changes in working capital management policy which is likely due to management’ s motivation for preservation of cash and continuation of firm life. This research finds no evidence of dominant effects of other competing factors identified as the origins of accruals nonlinearity in previous research.

This research examines the moderating effects of agency costs on the relation between corporate social responsibility and cost stickiness of firms listed in Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE). The sample consists of 102 firms listed in TSE over the period from 2005 to 2014. This research is a quantitative research and research method is correlation and Panel data analysis using constant effects method. The results indicate a direct influence of corporate social responsibility and the agency costs on the cost stickiness. Also, results show that two groups of agency costs indices including asset turnover ratio and the interaction between a firm growth opportunities and free cash flows have a moderating effect on the relation between corporate social responsibility and cost stickiness; however, operating costs to net sale ratio has no moderating effects on the relation. Findings indicate that corporate social responsibility and agency cost have a direct impact on the costs stickiness, that is, firms with higher rate in social responsibility have more operating costs stickiness than firms with lower rate of social responsibility. In addition, agency cost decreases the relation between CSR and cost stickiness, according to the Vald test.

Accounting information transparency is a very important issue for all financial statement users, so there are a lot of researches in this area. Transparency of accounting information has a variety of aspects one of the most important of which is earnings quality. The main purpose of this research is to design a firm’ s rating model in terms of earnings quality in order to assess the accounting earnings quality of firms listed in Tehran Stock Exchange. Since the earnings quality has different dimensions, this research evaluates it from three dimensions including earnings time series features; relations among accruals, earnings, and cash flows; and information qualitative features, using eight criteria including earning persistence, predictability, smoothing, accruals quality, discretionary accruals, conservatism, value relevance and match. The important innovation of this research is designing a model to rank a firm’ s earnings quality based on comprehensive criteria. The sample consists of 135 firms listed in Tehran Stock Exchange over the period from 2004 to 2017. The exploratory factor analysis method is used for rating. The rating reliability is measured using the market value added criterion. The results indicate a direct and significant correlation between a firm's earnings quality rate and the market value added.

Today, tax avoidance, as an opportunistic behavior, is considered as one of the major problems which beset tax system. One of the various factors influencing corporate tax avoidance is social trust, such that directors of firms with high social trust level are less inclined to exercise opportunistic behavior and tax avoidance due to ethics in these firms. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the relation between social trust and corporate tax avoidance level, and also the moderating effects (substitutive or complementary) of corporate governance on this relation, using structural equation modeling approach. To do this, book-tax difference and tax effective rate are employed to measure tax avoidance, and Saffarinia and Sharif’ s (2010) questionnaire is used to evaluate social trust. The questionnaire is sent to 116 firms among which 82 firms participate in statistical analysis and answer back. Findings reveal that social trust mitigates tax avoidance. In addition, according to prediction of the substitution theory, the results indicate that corporate governance weakens the negative relation between social trust and corporate tax avoidance.

Internal audit function (IAF) is one of the main internal mechanisms of corporate governance that helps the organization achieve its goals. Effectiveness is one of the most important aspects of internal auditing that most of its dimensions have not previously been studied in Iran. This research is aimed to investigate effects of some basic elements on effectiveness of IAF. So, this study examines the effect of five factors (Internal Auditor Competence, Internal Auditing Independence, Management Support Of Internal Audit, Size Of Internal Audit Function, Coordination Between Internal and External Auditors) including 29 sub factors on the effectiveness of IAF. The sample consists of 131 internal auditors of firms with an active IAF. From one hand, the level of IAF effectiveness is measured through participants (using 29 sub factors), and from the other hand, it is questioned through the information related to IAF characteristics. Then, the relation between IAF characteristics (independent variables) and the level of IAF effectiveness (dependent variable) is tested. The results from the analysis of collected data show that all the five dimensions have a positive and significant effect on the IAF effectiveness.

This study is aimed to investigate audit quality effects on the relation between accounting information quality and investment efficiency. Audit quality is measured using observable variables of reports type, expertise, and audit tenure period. The sample consists of 864 year-firm over the period from 2009 to 2017 and the study method is multivariate regression. The results show that the external high quality audit is a mechanism decreasing challenges from agency costs and improper choice and thus enhancing investment efficiency, through improving accounting information quality. Also, the results of the research indicate that reducing overinvestment and underinvestment through improving the quality of accounting information is more effective in firms with higher audit quality.

Considering the financial problems around the world, using a regulatory approach in corporate governance and also enhancing audit quality in order to assure shareholders have an increasing importance now. Since shareholders rely on the financial data validated by auditors in order to make decisions, auditor's characteristics may affect managers' action of financial information manipulation. On the other hand, the Board structure may affect accounting method choice, specially earning management. This study is aimed to investigate effects of audit characteristics including audit tenure and audit firm size, as well as the board's ownership and oversight structure on earning management. The sample consists of 220 firms listed in Tehran Stock Exchange during 2009 to 2015. Findings indicate that there is a significant and direct relation between chief executive officer ownership and the earning management. Other results also show a positive significant relation between audit tenure and earning management. One of the interesting findings is that firms employing auditors with more than 5 to 10 partners and technical directors, has less earning management.

This paper is aimed to investigate the nonlinear relation between disclosure and financial performance and effects of earning management on this relation. The sample consists firms listed in Tehran exchange, during the period from 2000 to 2016. This study uses panel GMM method and results show that there is an inverse U relation between discretionary disclosure and financial performance. In other words, increase of disclosure at threshold level may improve financial performance, but its increase more than threshold level decreases financial performance. Also, findings indicate that earning management significantly decreases the effects of disclosure on financial performance. Moreover, earning management and financial performance adjustments significantly decrease the effect of board independence on relation between disclosure and financial performan.

Information asymmetry, in the line of corporation governance and being affected by agency theory, makes demands for auditing. In capital markets, information is considered as an important factor which is qualified by auditors. The main objective of this study is to investigate the effect of industrial auditors' specialty on the relation between governance mechanisms and information asymmetries. The sample consists of 173 firms listed in Tehran Stock Exchange during the period from 2010 to 2017. To test the hypothesis, data is analyzed using panel data analysis method. CEO's responsibility duality, institutional ownership, board of directors size, and board of directors independency criteria are used in order to investigate the corporation governance mechanisms and also the average bid and offer price difference is used to measure the asymmetric information. The results suggest that industrial auditor specialty has a moderating effect on the relation between corporate governance mechanisms and information asymmetry.

In recent years, intangible assets have received an increasing importance and considered as a valuable factor from the scientific communities and high-level executives. One of these assets is goodwill that its amortization in Iran is different from what included in international standards. The difference in amortization of these valuable assets which may also have value relevance, seems to be an important issue. Accordingly, this study examines the value relevance of goodwill amortization and effects of financial leverage on it, considering both international and Iranian standards. The research population included 70 firms listed in Tehran Stock Exchange during the period from 2008 to 2017. To test hypotheses, the multivariate linear regression using the pooled and panel data is applied. Results show that there is a significant negative relation between goodwill amortization according to Iranian standards as well as international standards and market capitalization. Moreover, findings indicate that goodwill amortization based on international standards has more power to explain stock market capitalization than goodwill amortization based on Iranian standards. Also, results show that financial leverage has a significant effect on the relation between goodwill amortization and stock market capitalization, according to both international and Iranian standards.