Jeffrey Pittman

Auditor Choice in Politically Connected Firms

We extend recent research on the links between political connections and financial reporting by examining the role of auditor choice. Our evidence that public firms with political connections are more likely to appoint a Big 4 auditor supports the intuition that insiders in these firms are eager to improve accounting transparency to convince outside investors that they refrain from exploiting their connections to divert corporate resources. In evidence consistent with another prediction, we find that this link is stronger for connected firms with ownership structures conducive to insiders seizing private benefits at the expense of minority investors. We also find that the relation between political connections and auditor choice is stronger for firms operating in countries with relatively poor institutional infrastructure, implying that tough external monitoring by Big 4 auditors becomes more valuable for preventing diversion in these situations. Finally, we report that connected firms with Big 4 auditors exhibit less earnings management and enjoy greater transparency, higher valuations, and cheaper equity financing.

The Determinants and Consequences of Tax Audits: Some Evidence from China

Using proprietary data obtained from a local tax office in China, we examine the determinants of corporate tax audits and the consequences of those audits. We find that the tax authority is more likely to select a firm for an audit when the firm has a lower effective tax rate, a higher book-tax difference, and more income-decreasing discretionary accruals. In addition, the tax office imposes larger tax payments on the audited firms that have lower effective tax rates, higher book-tax differences, and more income-decreasing discretionary accruals. Applying a difference-in-difference and matching research design, we find that after firms have been audited they significantly increase their effective tax rates, reduce their book-tax differences, and reduce their income-decreasing discretionary accruals. Our study provides important insights on the determinants of the tax authority’s decision on whether to initiate an audit and the impact of tax audits on both tax reporting and financial reporting.

External versus Internal Monitoring: The Importance of Multiple Large Shareholders and Families to Auditor Choice in Western European Firms

The ownership structures of Western European firms engender agency conflicts between: (i) owners and managers (type I); and (ii) minority and controlling shareholders (type II). Prior research stresses that credible financial reporting ameliorates agency problems by identifying any diversion of corporate resources. We examine whether external monitoring by a high-quality auditor helps reduce the agency problems embedded in the ownership structures of Western European firms. In regressions that control for firm characteristics as well as country and industry fixed effects, we find that the demand for a Big Four auditor is insensitive to whether the largest shareholder’s control rights exceed her cash flow rights. Consequently, we fail to find any evidence that the agency conflict between minority and controlling shareholders affects the demand for external monitoring. In contrast, we find strong, robust evidence that firms with multiple large shareholders and family-dominated firms are associated with a lower demand for Big Four auditors. This suggests that committed internal monitoring by multiple large shareholders and families is valuable, which reduces the benefit of external monitoring by a Big Four auditor. Collectively, our research suggests that Western European firms rely more heavily on Big Four auditors when the type I agency problem stemming from the separation of ownership from management is worse. However, supplementary analysis reveals that East Asian firms that are known to suffer from poor corporate governance do not substitute between external monitoring by a high-quality auditor and internal monitoring by multiple large shareholders or families, which squares with prior research that the type II agency problem is more relevant in this region.

The Importance of Aggressive Tax Planning to the Diversion of Corporate Resources: Evidence from Chinese Public Firms

In measuring tunneling with inter-corporate loans disclosed by Chinese listed companies, we analyze the underlying channels through which aggressive tax planning facilitates the diversion of corporate resources by firm insiders. Using path analysis, we document that the path from tax aggressiveness to related loans is mediated by both the additional cash flows from tax savings and the increased financial opacity from tax planning, and that additional cash flows plays a much more important role than opacity at helping controlling shareholders to divert corporate resources under the guise of tax aggressiveness. Beyond the two mediated paths, we also detect a residual, direct path from tax aggressiveness to related loans. After the exogenous shock from the government crackdown on diversionary related loans, we find the direct path is fully mediated by the two indirect paths, suggesting that tunneling via related loans only occurs at firms where insiders can mask tunneling under the cover of opacity or can justify related loans on grounds of abnormal cash flows from tax savings. Our evidence supports the notion that greater outside scrutiny increases the hurdle for, but does not entirely eradicate, diversion facilitated by tax aggressiveness. Collectively, our research lends some support to recent theory on the importance of taxes to corporate governance by demonstrating how the agency costs of tax planning allow certain shareholders to benefit from firm activities at the expense of others.

The Importance of IRS Enforcement to Stock Price Crash Risk: The Role of CEO Characteristics

We analyze whether tough IRS monitoring generates a positive externality by constraining managers’ bad news hoarding activities. Supporting this prediction, we find a negative relation between the threat of an IRS audit and stock price crash risk. Our evidence is consistent with recent theory that outside investors learn more about firms when tax enforcement is stricter. Additionally, path analysis suggests that the monitoring channel (direct path) plays a critical role in shaping crash risk relative to information asymmetry channels of tax planning and accruals manipulation (indirect paths). Consistent with other predictions, we find that the monitoring role of IRS audits intensifies when firms experience worse agency conflicts stemming from CEO power and incentives. Collectively, our research implies that external monitoring by tax authorities protects shareholders against managers suppressing negative firm-specific information that engenders stock price crash risk, particularly when CEOs have wider scope and stronger incentives to hoard bad news.

Managerial Mood and Earnings Forecast Bias: Evidence from Sunshine Exposure

We examine the role and economic consequences of emotions in influencing the judgment of corporate executives. Analyzing a large sample of U.S. public firms, we find that sunshine-induced good mood leads managers to make upwardly biased earnings forecasts. Importantly, our evidence implies that managers become less susceptible to the sunshine priming effect when the information environment is more certain, external monitoring is stricter, and managerial incentive structures are stronger. Additional results suggest that market participants are capable of unraveling sunshine-induced biased forecasts, and that managers who are prone to the sunshine priming effect impose costs on their firms in the form of higher information risk and equity financing costs. Reflecting that labor markets also play a disciplinary role, we find that mood prone managers suffer adverse career outcomes. Our paper is the first large-scale study to document the nuanced ways in which emotions affect top executives.

Obscured by Clouds: The Impact of Weather-Induced Managerial Mood on Corporate Tax Avoidance

We examine the impact of managerial mood on corporate tax avoidance—a ubiquitous corporate decision. Using variation in local sunshine as exogenous shocks to managerial mood, we report strong, robust evidence that negative mood induced by cloudy weather leads firms to undertake more aggressive tax positions. Reinforcing the intuition underlying our main result, we find that negative weather-induced mood is positively associated with managers’ subjective perceptions of firms’ financial constraints, but not with their actual financial constraints. In the cross-sectional analysis, we find that the importance of weather-induced mood to tax avoidance subsides when the board has more financial expertise and the tax audit threat is greater—i.e., in situations when managers are held more accountable for their tax planning decisions. Taken together, our findings cast weather-induced managerial mood as a salient contextual factor shaping corporate tax avoidance decisions.

The Importance of Information Asymmetry to Auditor Choice, Audit Fees, and Going Concern Opinions: Evidence from Exploiting Exogenous Shifts in Analyst Coverage

We analyze whether information asymmetry affects three major aspects of the audit process using an instrumental variables research design that exploits exogenous increases in information asymmetry stemming from brokerage house mergers and closures. Consistent with our predictions, we find that a rise in information asymmetry leads to: (i) a higher (lower) probability that firms switch to a higher (lower) quality auditor, implying that information asymmetry stimulates demand for auditing, (ii) higher audit fees, implying that worse information asymmetry is a priced audit risk, and (iii) a higher probability that auditors render a going concern opinion, implying that auditors’ reporting decisions are sensitive to this risk. In another approach to confronting the endogeneity threat that undermines reliable identification in extant research, our core evidence holds in a difference-in-difference framework that involves examining the three auditing outcomes surrounding the brokerage house merger/closure window.

Are Insiders Equal? Evidence from Earnings Management in Closely Held East Asian Firms

In analyzing newly collected data on the ultimate ownership structure of publicly traded firms in nine East Asian economies, we contribute to international accounting research by providing evidence on earnings management in insider-controlled firms in this region. We find that family-controlled firms engage in less (more) accrual-based (real) earnings management than other insider-controlled firms. Our analysis suggests that controlling families, unlike other types of ultimate owners, tend to substitute real earnings management for accrual-based earnings management. To help empirically clarify the role that two incentives (entrenchment versus signaling) play in driving the substitution between real and accruals-based earnings management, we examine their valuation impact and find that both types negatively affect the future valuation of family firms. In another set of results consistent with expectations, we document that country-level investor protection and firm external financing demand shape the practice of earnings management in family-controlled firms.

Network Analysis of Audit Partner Rotation

Although mandatory audit partner rotation has become prevalent worldwide, prior empirical research seldom considers how the successor partners are identified and the economic consequences of different rotation strategies. We examine the importance of internal networks to the selection of successor partners and the underlying incentives in the selection process in China, which affords an opportune testing ground for analyzing our research questions. We find that candidate partners who are familiar with the incumbents—evident in prior teamwork experience—are more likely to be selected as successors. Consistent with expectations, this phenomenon is more pronounced when the engagement information is more complex, alternative channels to transfer client information to the successor are not available, and the engagement is more attractive. These results are consistent with auditors’ incentive to facilitate information transfer and maintain client satisfaction after the transition. Reinforcing this interpretation, we find that post-rotation audit quality improves and clients are less likely to switch audit firms after the rotation when the successor partner is familiar with the incumbent. Enriching our understanding of the production of audit services in audit firms, our analysis contributes to the public policy discourse on partner rotation.