Soo Young Kwon

Ownership structure and earnings informativeness: Evidence from Korea

Abstract This paper examines the relationship between corporate ownership structure in Korea and the informativeness of earnings. Korean ownership structure is characterized by the dominance of one primary owner who also participates in firm management. Existing literature offers two alternative perspectives on the behavior of such owner–manager firms, convergence of interests, and management entrenchment hypotheses. We tested the alternative views to see how they are reflected in earnings informativeness. The results show that earnings are more informative as holdings of the owner increase, supporting the convergence of interest explanation for the owner–manager structure. Second, we examine the role of institutional investors and blockholders. On the one hand, institutions/blockholders have incentives to actively monitor management. However, on the other hand, institutions/blockholders may not render effective monitoring because they lack expertise, suffer from freerider problems, or strategically ally with management. These opposing views predict conflicting signs on the relation between the earnings informativeness and holdings of institutions/blockholders. We find that earnings informativeness increases with the holdings of institutions and blockholders. This supports the active monitoring role of institutions/blockholders. Finally, we test the relationship between earnings informativeness for chaebol (Korean business group)-affiliated companies vs. that for nonchaebol-affiliated companies, and find no significant relationship between the owner–largest shareholders holdings and earnings informativeness. This provides evidence that for chaebol companies, the negative effect of management entrenchment/expropriation of minority shareholders offsets the positive effects. This phenomenon is stronger for chaebol-affiliated companies than for nonchaebol affiliates.

Trading Volume and Investor Disagreement Around Management Forecast Disclosures

We investigate the relationship between trading volume and investor disagreement over information before and from management forecast disclosures. Prior studies on trading volume usually focus on earnings announcements, which are mandatory and largely anticipated by investors, and report that trading volume around earnings announcements are significantly related to investor disagreement over information before and from the announcement. We use management earnings forecasts to test Kim and Verrecchia’s (1997) prediction that trading volume around an unanticipated information event reflects investors’ differential interpretation of information from the event relatively more than that of information available before the event. Consistent with the prediction, we find that trading volume around a management forecast is significantly related to belief jumbling, a proxy for investor disagreement over management forecast information, but not to analyst forecast dispersion before a management forecast, which is a proxy for investor disagreement over information available before the information event. Our findings are robust to the two-stage self-selection estimation and other sensitivity tests. We also find that the volume–jumbling relationship tends to be stronger for management forecasts with bad news or shorter forecast horizon. Finally, using earnings announcements subsequent to management forecast disclosures, we report results that suggest that management forecasts trigger preemptive information processing activities before the scheduled information events.

The Effects of Accruals Quality on Audit Hours and Audit Fees

We investigate whether auditors take into account accruals quality, a proxy for the cash flow risk associated with earnings, by adjusting audit hours and audit fees. Accruals quality tells investors about the mapping of accounting earnings into cash flows. Poor accruals quality weakens this mapping and thus increases this cash flow risk. We find a negative relationship between accruals quality and audit hours/fees, indicating that auditors increase their audit efforts by modifying audit procedures and substantive tests and charge higher fees for the increased cash flow risk. In addition, we find that both innate accruals quality and discretionary accruals quality are negatively related to audit hours and fees but that innate accruals quality is more likely to influence audit hours and fees than discretionary accruals quality. The results indicate that auditors incorporate the cash flow risk associated with accruals quality but that their response varies according to the source of accruals quality.

Investment Decisions in Anticipation of Recessions and Outperformance of Pre-Acting Firms

ABSTRACT We empirically examine whether firms make investment decisions in anticipation of recessions and subsequently perform better. Using a large quarterly dataset of fixed asset investments for U.S. firms during 1984–2012, we show that not all firms efficiently adjust their investment decisions in anticipation of a recession. However, we find that pre-acting firms that properly adjust their investment decisions (i.e., underinvest) before a recession outperform re-acting firms that fail to make proper investment decisions (i.e., overinvest) before a recession in subsequent returns on assets, returns on investments, and market-adjusted return measures.

The economic effects of IFRS adoption in Korea

Abstract This paper examines whether Korea’s mandatory adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) is associated with higher earnings quality. Based on Korean listed companies, we compare earnings quality and market assessment in the pre-IFRS period (2007–2010) with those in the post-IFRS period (2011–2014). We find significant IFRS adoption effects by documenting smaller absolute values in discretionary accruals and real earnings management, higher accrual quality, stronger earnings persistence, and less frequent negative earnings. Thus, we provide evidence of improved earnings quality with Korea’s mandatory IFRS adoption. Additionally, we document an increase in the value relevance of earnings, more accurate analysts’ earnings forecasts, and higher audit fees and hours. These results show that investors and analysts view improvements in the information environment, and auditors’ respond to the complex environment by demanding higher audit fees and making additional efforts after mandatory IFRS adoption.

Effects of agency costs on the relationship of corporate governance with audit quality and accounting conservatism in the Korean audit market

This study examines the effects of agency costs (AC) on the relationship of corporate governance with audit quality and accounting conservatism. We employ audit hours and audit fees as proxies for audit quality, and accounting conservatism as a proxy for financial reporting quality. We find that the positive relation between corporate governance and audit quality is attenuated in the presence of AC. We also document that AC tend to weaken the negative relation between corporate governance and accounting conservatism. These results demonstrate that the relationship of corporate governance with audit quality and accounting conservatism is conditional on AC.