Garen Markarian

Earnings Management in Family Firms: Evidence from R&D Cost Capitalization in Italy

Recent accounting-related scandals have underscored the prevalence of earnings management in financial markets. This article provides empirical evidence on the motivations for earnings management in publicly listed family companies, highlighting the differences from public nonfamily firms. Basing our predictions on an analysis of the salient characteristics of family firms in both an agency and a stewardship framework, we hypothesize that family firms are less sensitive to income-smoothing motivations than are nonfamily firms, while they are similarly motivated to manage earnings for debt-covenant and leverage-related reasons. We test our hypotheses by looking at a specific accrual, R&D cost capitalization, where statistical tests confirm our hypothesized relationships.

The Convergence of Disclosure and Governance Practices in the World’s Largest Firms*

Many studies discuss convergence of cross-border governance and governance-related disclosure practices, but provide little empirical evidence to support their arguments and analysis. Our study examines the governance and disclosure practices of the worlds largest transnational firms. Using a unique dataset of 75 large firms in two time periods, 1995 and 2002, we examine both the governance practices, and disclosures regarding those governance practices, across Anglo-Saxon and non-Anglo-Saxon firms. Results indicate that non-Anglo-Saxon firms have developed their governance practices towards promoting an independent mechanism of control, namely a mechanism that is more similar to an Anglo-Saxon governance regime. In regard to governance-related disclosure practices, results indicate that for both Anglo-Saxon and non-Anglo-Saxon groups, disclosure practices have been evolving and converging towards more disclosures regarding governance matters. Copyright (c) 2007 The Authors; Journal compilation (c) 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Inside Agency: The Rise and Fall of Nortel

By employing the theoretical template provided by agency theory, this article contributes a detailed clinical analysis of a large multinational Canada-headquartered telecommunications company, Nortel. Our analysis reveals a twenty-first century norm of usual suspects: a CEO whose compensation is well above those of his peers, a dysfunctional board of directors, acts of income smoothing to preserve the confidence of volatile investors, and revelations of financial irregularities followed by a downfall. In many ways, the spectacular rise and – sudden – fall of Nortel illustrates excesses of actors within, and contradictions of the system of corporate governance implied by the agency model. Furthermore, this case illustrates limitations of the agency framework in complex situations with short-term oriented investors.

Institutional Investors and Insider Trading Profitability

Abstract This study examines the relationship between institutional ownership and the profitability of insider trading. A priori the relationship is not clear. On the one hand, institutions possess superior information that erodes insider advantages and are also active in monitoring. On the other hand, institutions could treat insider trading as an incentivizing mechanism to induce manager effort, leading to improved aggregate shareholder welfare. The results indicate that, on average, institutional ownership is negatively related to the profitability of insider trading, and this relationship derives from both direct monitoring and trading/pricing. Further analysis indicates that this relationship is concentrated for insider sales. In contrast, the findings reveal a positive relationship between institutions and the profitability of insider purchases, indicating an incentivizing role.

THE CRISIS AND FAIR VALUES: ECHOES OF EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY DEBATES?

The recent global financial crisis has led to extensive criticism of the role of accounting and its use of fair value measurement in causing and spreading the crisis. This paper argues that the debate surrounding fair value vs. historic cost, and relevance versus reliability, is nothing new; it was at the center of early accounting discussions in the AAA (especially by A.C. Littleton and W.A. Paton), the AICPA (especially G.O. May), and the SEC. Although prominent accounting scholars and practitioners in postdepression 1929 focused on the use of historic cost, the paper discusses the decision of the IASB/FASB to move reliability to a secondary characteristic in its recent conceptual framework. This action ignores lessons learned from a century of research, teaching, and practice of accounting.

Oil Prices, Earnings, and Stock Returns

Research has failed to document a consistent association between oil prices and stock prices. We propose and examine whether that failure is due to the need to link oil price changes to firm-level changes in earnings and investments. We find that the impact of oil prices on a firm’s earnings and investments varies significantly by industry and by whether the firm is an oil producer or oil consumer. Nevertheless, firm fixed effects explain more than 10 times the variation between oil prices and a firm’s earnings and investments than industry and time fixed effects combined, indicating that aggregation by industry and time can mask the unique impact of oil prices on an individual firm’s earnings and investments. We also find that investors react more strongly to oil-related earnings than non-oil-related earnings, particularly for oil consumers. Investor reaction to oil-related earnings also spills over to the stock prices of industry peers. By providing a firm-level mapping of the impact of oil prices on earnings, investments, and stock prices, our paper extends studies that have examined the impact of oil prices on the aggregate economy and stock markets.