António Cerqueira

Audit Fees and Firm Performance

There are multiple studies investigating firm performance, in particular studies identifying firm characteristics that drive performance. On the other hand, research on the pricing of audit fees provides credible evidence that the financial condition of a client is a critical factor, in the sense that riskier clients demand more thorough audit procedures. This study investigates the relationship between audit fees and firm performance. Using a sample of U.S. publicly traded, non-financial firms covering the period from 2000 to 2008, a fixed effects model is presented to estimate firm operating performance. The model included standard control variables, such as size, leverage, sales growth and research and development intensity. In addition, measures of corporate governance were introduced. This study provides empirical evidence on the relationship between firm performance and audit fees. Specifically, increases (decreases) in operating performance are connected with decreases (increases) in audit fees. This investigation provides initial grounds on the performance perspective of the stated association.

Are European Socially Responsible Mutual Funds Rewarding and Profitable

The last two decades have shown us the growing importance of corporate, social and governance programs, as executives, investors and regulators have become increasingly aware of these programs’ potential to mitigate corporate crises and build solid social reputation. Thus, mutual funds that invest according to social, environmental and ethical criteria have increased both in volume and value. This paper investigates the performance of a sample of 80 socially responsible mutual funds from 8 European countries, within the period from 2002 to 2010. Using both the mainstream unconditional model and the most recent conditional models, we address a performance comparison between these funds and unscreened benchmark Indices as well as socially responsible benchmark Indices. We then attest the models results by applying the classical Sharpe Ratio to our Funds sample. We find out that European socially responsible mutual funds present, in general, neutral performance when compared with both benchmark portfolios. Furthermore, performance estimates seem to be slightly higher when funds are analyzed in relation to socially responsible indices and this benchmark has higher explaining power. Conditional models also seem to lead to a slight uplift of performance estimates and of explanatory capacity of the models applied. Sharpe Ratio confirms that there is no significant performance difference between the compared elements. This is consistent with most precedent empirical findings on this issue. Our study reveals that investors can adhibit social screens to their investment choices without pledging their financial returns, contrary to portfolio theory predictions. This paper proves that it is possible to “do well (financially) while doing good (socially)”.

Accruals quality, managers’ incentives and stock market reaction: evidence from Europe

ABSTRACT We investigate if accruals quality is a valuable indicator of earnings quality for stock market investors. Our particular focus is on the incremental informative value of taking into account managers’ incentives for using accruals. We propose a market-based approach for assessing the usefulness of this indicator to improve investors’ decisions. Specifically, we examine the association between accruals quality and information asymmetry among stock market participants. Our empirical study uses data on European firms and our results are consistent with a positive association between poor earnings quality and high information asymmetry. However, given some previous studies suggesting that accruals-based measures may be noisy indicators of earnings quality, we develop a method to increase the informational content of the accruals quality measure. Based on our results, we find that combining accruals quality with the dispersion in analysts’ forecasts provides a better indicator of earnings quality rather than only accruals quality.

Modeling Corporate Tax Risk: Evidence from Portugal

Given the current Portuguese economic and financial situation, it becomes increasingly necessary to safeguard the credits of the State. Thus, this study aims to analyze the risk of tax non-compliance, specifically in companies in the sector of real estate agencies. To achieve this goal, we use confidential data from the Portuguese Tax and Customs Authority (Autoridade Tributaria e Aduaneira-AT) for the period from 2007 to 2009, as well as data on the AT major debtors, with debt amounts exceeding € 100,000. In this research, we use two of the methodologies that have been employed in studies of financial distress: Discriminant Analysis and Logistic Regression. After testing 28 financial indicators, five variables were selected to include in the empirical model: financial profitability, total asset turnover, liquidity, debt and tax burden. We were able to identify the profile of the companies with the highest risk of tax non-compliance.

Executive Compensation: New vs. Old Economy and the Impact of NASDAQ Crash and Sarbanes Oxley Act

This is a new study which examines whether the determinants and the forms of compensation in new versus old economy US firms are the same over time and if the structure of compensation for executives in both groups changes after the NASDAQ crash and the enactment of the Sarbanes-Oxley act.The results reveal that the new economy executives receive, on average, much more than the executives from the old economy, primarily due to stock options, but in the last few years the difference in compensation between the executives of both groups is decreasing.We find that the NASDAQ crash and the Sarbanes-Oxley act had a significant impact upon the structure of the components of executive compensation in both new and old economy firms. Firms in both groups have reduced the use of stock options and have instead increased the use of bonuses and restricted stocks.We also find that the factors that explain executive compensation in new and old economy firms are generally different, and in the case of the variables that are the same, like firm size component, the intensity of the factors is different.

New Vs. Old Economy: Trends and Determinants of Executive Compensation

We analyzed the executive compensation in the new and old economy in the period between 1992 to 2005. We focused on the evolution of the compensation and the factors that explain the executive compensation and if the form of compensation changed after the Nasdaq crash and the Sarbanes-Oxley act. Our results reveal that the new economy executives received, on average, much more than executives from the old economy from 1992 to 2003, but after 2004 the mean difference is very small and not statistically significant. In terms of compensation components, old economy executives always received more salary than new economy executives, and between 1992 to 2000, new economy executives received more bonus than old economy executives, but after this year the situation changes. We also found that the crash of Nasdaq and the Sarbanes Oxley act affected in a different way the executive compensation from new and old economy. In the case of the new economy, executives are changing from stock options based compensation to restricted stocks, and in the case of the old economy, they are changing to bonuses. We also investigated the impact of corporate governance and financial variables on new and old economy CEOs and Directors compensation and found evidence that the percentage of stock options that are vested but not exercised, size of the firm, the percentage of firm stocks owned by the executive, volatility, closing price of the company stock for the calendar year, one year total return to shareholders, number of board meetings, age as CEO and the ROA are variables that play important roles in explaining CEO and Director compensation. We also found that these factors are not all the same when we explain CEO and directors compensation from new and old economy and, in the case of the variables that are the same the intensity of the coefficients is different and generally statistically significant