Very few countries require directors to be financially literate. This article investigates the determinants of boards' financial expertise using a sample of 95 non-financial French listed firms. We construct a measure of financial expertise based on educational and career background data for 943...

Private firms with relatively high costs of disclosure may benefit from a close relationship with a bank. Relationship lending is based on intertemporal contracting and requires the bank to acquire private information about the firm and, moreover, to keep this information private. For both...

For some privately-held firms, the costs of providing high-quality accrual-based financial statements may outweigh the benefits of accommodating the demands of their stakeholders who may rely more on cash flows or have direct access to management. For other private firms, greater stakeholder...

We examine whether chief financial officers (CFOs) with accounting backgrounds (accountant CFOs) are associated with more conservative corporate outcomes. We find that, in high-growth industries, firms with accountant CFOs invest less in research and development and capital expenditures and are...

This paper examines how constraints on firms' financing capacity relate to managers' discretionary accounting choices. Three hypotheses of earnings management — the opportunism hypothesis, the rational expectations hypothesis, and the signaling hypothesis — predict that constrained firms...

This paper examines the issue of perceived value generated by the assignment of financial value to intangibles in financial reporting. In particular, values assigned to goodwill and other intangibles in mergers and acquisitions are examined, and the impact of such intangible valuations as a...

Objective – This study investigates the effects of financial constraints on the conservatism practices of Brazilian firms.Design/methodology/approach – A sample totaling 1,086 observations of Brazilian publicly traded companies listed on BM&FBovespa was developed from 2000 to 2012. In the...

In this article we expand the semi-replication framework by Burgard and Kjaer to derivative books with multiple counterparties. We then find the funding strategy that corresponds to the recent funding value adjustment accounting proposal by Albanese and Andersen. This strategy is asymmetric and...

I explore the evolving role of accounting information in allocating capital. Accounting arose to control conflicts of interest in organizations (stewardship role). The industrial revolution spawned capital-intensive firms and public capital markets with dispersed shareholders to finance these...

This study seeks to determine, by exploiting accounting disclosures regarding variable interest entities required by SFAS No.166, and data related to sales-securitizations banks activities; whether the accounting treatment assigned by bank holding companies to an asset securitization defines its...