Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of Audit Quality on Earnings Management of Listed Oil Marketing Companies in Nigeria

This paper examines the effect of audit quality attributes on earnings management of listed oil marketing companies in Nigeria. Secondary data were extracted from nine companies listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) from 2009 to 2014 and analyzed using panel multiple regression technique. The result of Hausman specification test suggests that the fixed effect regression model is most appropriate for the dataset. The result of the fixed effect regression model showed that audit firm size, auditor industry specialization, client importance and audit committee financial expertise are positively associated with earnings management of the firms at 1%, 5%, 1% and 5% level of significance respectively. In contrast, auditor tenure and the interaction between audit committee financial expertise and auditor industry specialization were negatively and significantly associated with earnings management of the firms at 5% level of significance respectively. The paper therefore concludes that audit quality has significant effect on earnings management of listed oil marketing companies in Nigeria. In line with the findings, the paper recommends among others that public companies who hire the services of audit firms in Nigeria should judge audit firms on the basis of performance in prior assignments and not just the size of the audit firm in view of the fact that audit firm size is not associated with less earnings management of Nigerian firms. Also, regulatory authorities such as SEC should come out with a policy that will encourage audit firms in Nigeria to specialize along industry lines of companies listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) to enable effective audit service. Regulatory bodies such as SEC and Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria (FRCN) should also come out with a policy that makes it mandatory for Nigerian companies to publish both audit and non-audit fees paid to their auditors. The disclosure of both fees will enable users of audited financial statements in Nigeria to determine the level of auditor client importance and consequently, the reliance to place on the auditor’s report. <br>
How Does the Conditional Quantile Dependence in the FOREX Market Change Depending on the Time of Day? Analysis Based on Ask and Bid Prices

In the paper, we show that estimates of the strength of linkages between the exchange rates EUR/USD, AUD/USD, GBP/USD, and NZD/USD below small or above large quantiles de-pend on the time of day, at which the daily returns are calculated. We argue that this is due to the activity of traders in different parts of the world, and the impact of the information flow. We use daily returns calculated for each hour of the day. The analysis is performed separately for bid and ask prices. We model the conditional dependence by means of bivari-ate Markov-switching copula models. Then, quantile dependence probabilities are calculated for the fitted conditional copulas. The models include copulas that can capture different types of asymmetry and tail behavior. Our results show that the applied dynamic dependence measures change significantly, depending on the hour of the day. The rankings of the strength of the dependence below small or above large quantiles, which we obtain using the model confidence set methodology, can be useful in portfolio risk management.
Who’s Your Daddy? Intergenerational Mobility in the U.S. Financial Industry

This paper investigates the intergenerational mobility with regard to people’s decision to work in the U.S. financial industry over the last 47 years. I present evidence that children of fathers who worked in the financial industry during their childhood are about 8 percentage points more likely to work in finance themselves. This increase in likelihood is greater than in most other industries and is driven solely by wealthier families. In addition, I document that second-generation finance industry employees whose fathers already worked in finance enjoy a substantial income surplus compared to their industry peers.
Dollar Liquidity, Trade Invoicing, and Real Effects: Evidence from India

We provide causal evidence on the linkage between dollar liquidity and dollar invoicing exploiting an unanticipated shock to the dollar financing around the Taper Tantrum. Using the differential funding shock across countries, we test the impact of dollar liquidity on invoicing and imports by Indian firms using transaction-level data. We find that (i) firm-level dollar invoicing drops in response to dollar funding shock with corresponding rise in Euro and producer currency pricing, (ii) local presence of foreign banks allows Indian firms to smooth-out the liquidity shock, and (iii) firms transfer liquidity from one market to another using their internal capital markets to smooth-out country specific funding shocks. We document that firms unable to maintain the level of dollar invoicing are more likely to lose a trade connection. <br>
Asset Valuations and Distributions of Returns: Cross-Country Perspective

In this paper we investigate the relationship between asset valuations and the probability distributions of future asset price moves in domestic and foreign markets. We find that (1) elevated (subdued) valuations help explain probabilities (and in some cases magnitudes) of large equity price declines (increases) over medium term, (2) U.S. price-earnings (P/E) ratio carries incremental predictive information for explaining probabilities of large foreign equity price changes even after conditioning on foreign countries' own P/E ratios, and (3) U.S. P/E ratio appears to be at least as informative as the first principal component of P/Es of all the considered countries. The last two results echo the findings in the financial cycle literature on the global importance of financial conditions in the United States.
How Do Institutional Investors React to Geographically Dispersed Information Shocks? A Test Using the COVID-19 Pandemic

We examine how institutional investors react to geographically dispersed local shocks during periods of market turmoil. Using a sample of Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) that enables us to link the locations of institutional investors, REIT headquarters, and the locations of assets held by REITs, we find that the ownership of firms with an economic interest in the investor’s home MSA declined more in markets heavily affected by the pandemic. In addition, the responses to shocks in markets where REITs had an economic interest were larger in those markets in which REITs had larger portfolio allocations and in markets that are home to the investors. Importantly, based on the performance of their REIT portfolios after the onset of the COVID-19 shock, our results suggest that some institutional investors may have overreacted to the shock. Our study highlights the importance of geography in the formation of investors’ expectations during market crises.
Distributional Forests for Short-Term Density Predictions of U.S. Inflation

Recent work by Medeiros et al. (2019, Journal of Business &amp; Economic Statistics) shows that point forecasts of the random forest machine learning algorithm systematically outperform well-established benchmarks at predicting U.S. inflation. This article extends their work from point to density forecasts derived from large-scale datasets by means of the novel distributional forest algorithm of Schlosser et al. (2019, The Annals of Applied Statistics), which allows us to simultaneously account for locally evolving means, time-varying volatilities, nonlinearities as well as heavy-tailed densities – all of which constitute stylized characteristics highlighted in the recent literature. We show that distributional forests typically achieve superior point and density predictions over random walk, auto-regressive and stochastic volatility benchmarks.
Banking structural reforms and top income shares: regulate or deregulate?

This article investigates if, and to what extent, banking structural reforms may affect the top income shares over time. Canada and Italy are used as case studies, as both countries undertook a major deregulation and liberalization process within their banking sector in the early 1990s. These banking policies aimed at privatizing the banking sector and reintroducing the quasi universal banking model. The evaluation of these policy packages is undertaken by implementing the Synthetic Control Method. Findings point out, overall, a robust and substantial increase of some of the top income shares in both countries, over the post-deregulation period. This work contributes by also identifying the main potential mechanisms—both direct and indirect—via which banking deregulation might have operated.
Brand Equity and Mediating Role of Brand Reputation in Hospitality Industry of Pakistan

Globally, the hospitality industry positions as one of the utmost modest commercial sectors, with hostile firms trusting on a mix of approaches, for instance, customer relationship marketing to stopover significant, entice and preserve customers. This article investigates how brand equity of the local and international fast-food restaurants effects brand reputation (BR) and brand trust (BT). The data collection questionnaire was employed to 369 randomly selected respondents at major cities of the country. The data analysis used structural equation modeling to ensure the statistical significance of the relationship that exists among dimensions of brand equity, brand reputation, and brand trust. The findings exhibits, a positive and significant association between brand awareness (BA), brand association (BAS), brand reputation, and brand trust. This study also reflects the full mediation. This implies that customer-based brand equity dimension and brand reputation are vital for brand trust. The outcomes of the scholarship will aid, to advance indulgent of the multifaceted psychosomatic procedures tangled in purchaser selection standards for fast-food restaurants and hospitality industry.
Sources of Comparative Advantage in Data-Related Services

Does digital infrastructure increase trade benefits in services, and how large are these trade benefits? This paper uses the prevalence of countries’ data centres and secure internet servers to investigate the impact of data-related infrastructures on services trade. Data centres and internet servers facilitate the production and trade of many service sectors reliant on software technologies. Therefore, digital infrastructures are complementary sources of comparative advantage in the more data-reliant sectors. Instrumental variable regressions underline this trade impact by using as instruments a country’s exposure to natural hazards since 1900, such as earthquakes, floods and droughts. Overall, data infrastructures are an important and exogenous determinants of specialization patterns in services dependent on software.
Machine Learning for Demand Estimation in Long Tail Markets

Random coefficient multinomial logit models are widely used to estimate customer preferences from sales data. However, these estimation models can only allow for products with positive sales; this selection leads to highly biased estimates in long tail markets, that is, markets where many products have zero or low sales. Such markets are increasingly common in areas such as online retail and other online marketplaces. In this paper, we propose a two-stage estimator that uses machine learning to correct for this bias. Our method first uses deep learning to predict the market shares of all products, where the neural network’s structure mirrors the random coefficient multinomial logit model’s data generating process. In the second stage, we use the predictions of the first stage to reweight the observed shares in a way that corrects for the induced bias and maintains the causal interpretation of the structural model. We show that the estimated parameters are consistent in the number of markets. Our method performs well on simulated and real long tail data, producing accurate estimates of customer behavior. These improved estimates can subsequently be used to provide prescriptive policy recommendations on important managerial decisions such as pricing, assortment, and so on. This paper was accepted by Gabriel Weintraub, revenue management and market analytics. Supplemental Material: The data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023. 4893 .
Fiscal Space and the Size of the Fiscal Multiplier

This paper investigates the interaction between fiscal policy transmission and fiscal sustainability, captured through the concept of fiscal space. In order to measure the evolution of fiscal space over time we propose four indicators, drawing from different concepts available in the literature. We use these indicators to define periods of ample and tight fiscal space. We then estimate the effects of government spending shocks in the United States according to the level of fiscal space, for the period 1929:Q1-2015:Q4. The main result of the paper is that fiscal multiplier is above one when fiscal space is ample, while it is below one when fiscal space is tight. Moreover, such difference is always significant. This result is very robust across different identification methods and samples.
Exploring the Strategic Role of Infrastructural Choices on Manufacturing Performance: Evidence from Kenya Sugar Sector

Technological developments in the sugar manufacturing sector require that the managers of these manufacturing firms devise strategies and make astute infrastructural choices in order to ensure survival, growth and improve manufacturing performance of the firm. This requires manufacturing firms to devise manufacturing technological advancements, frequent innovations, as well as rapid developments in their infrastructural capacities. The purpose of the study was to explore the strategic role of infrastructural choices in supporting manufacturing performance of sugar manufacturing firms in Kenya. Specifically, the study sought to: assess the effect of work force on performance, examine the effect of policies on performance, to explore the effect of communication on performance, and to determine the effect of innovation on performance of sugar manufacturing firms in Kenya. Anchored on Strategic and Routine Based theories, the study adopted both descriptive and experimental research designs anchored on realism ontology, and used both quantitative and qualitative approach. The unit of analysis was sugar manufacturing plant. The respondents were sought through both purposive and simple random sampling strategies, yielding a sample of 165 respondents. Structured questionnaires and interview schedule were used to collect primary data. Data was processed both descriptively and inferentially using Microsoft Excel 2010 and SPSS version 21. EFA, correlation analysis and regression analysis, were equally used, while qualitative data analysis was done through expert judgment, scenario mapping and critical thinking. The overall study results revealed that infrastructural choices have significant effect on manufacturing performance.
IFRS 17 Insurance Contracts and Firm Value

I examine how IFRS 17 Insurance Contracts affects the firm value of insurers reporting under IFRS (“IFRS insurers”). Studying 427 insurers’ stock returns around sixteen events affecting the chance that IFRS 17 passes, I find that the introduction of IFRS 17 is on average associated with negative abnormal returns for IFRS insurers, compared to insurers reporting under U.S. GAAP. Several robustness tests affirm my result, consistent with the hypothesis that IFRS 17 on average reduces firm value. OLS regressions indicate that the abnormal event returns correlate negatively with insurer size, suggesting that IFRS 17 is disproportionately costly for large insurers, potentially due to high implementation costs. Insurers’ book-to-market ratio negatively correlates with the abnormal event returns, which indicates that a lack of growth opportunities exacerbates the negative returns associated with the introduction of IFRS 17.
Sustainability Disclosure on Environmental Reporting: A Review of Literature in Developing Countries

In recent decades, environmental issues have emerged as a topic of increasing importance in the accounting literature. Environmental matters associated with industrial activities have increased public concerns about both financial and non-financial performance of firms leading to arising pressure for the disclosure and studies of environmental reporting, especially in developed countries. In the developing countries, however, relatively limited research in this area has been published, particularly in the Arab region. The main objective of this article is to present a review of recent literature on the sustainability accounting disclosure in developing countries. A number of theoretical frameworks have been developed to provide a further understanding of the concept of accounting for the disclosure. The literature reveals that the stakeholder theory is utilized in most studies. According to this theory, firms have to provide sustainability and environmental disclosure due to the pressures from all types of stakeholders and communities. Other theories which have been advanced to explain the disclosure practice include political economy, legitimacy, and institutional theory. In general, no specific theory is complete on its own or superior to another. The focus of this review is on identifying the determinants of the environmental disclosures and the current gap in those studies. These determinants can be divided into four groups. The first group examines the national contextual factors, the second group investigates the ownership structure, the third group evaluates companies’ characteristics, and final group investigates governance attributes as the determinants of the environmental disclosure practice. The review reveals a large variation related to environmental disclosure level in developing countries. The article contributes to the literature by providing a further understanding of environmental disclosure practices in countries where published studies are still very limited. This study also provides recommendations and direction for future research on sustainability environmental disclosure. <br><br>
Optimal Consumption and Investment with Cointegrated Stock and Housing Markets

The well-documented nonparticipation in the stock market by many households and the highly negative correlation between stock and housing investment are puzzling. We show that stock and housing markets are cointegrated, and thus households significantly increase housing expenditure, reduce stock investment, and may choose nonparticipation in the stock market at all if they face short-sale constraints. Our model can thus potentially help explain both the puzzle of stock market nonparticipation and the puzzle of the highly negative correlation between stock and housing investment. We also show some empirical evidence that is supportive of the model's main implications.
On the Role of Internationalization of Firm-Level Corporate Governance – The Case of Audit Committees

Motivated by agency theory and arguments from linguistic studies, we argue in this paper the internationalization of a firm’s audit committee to be associated with weaker firm-level corporate governance. Based on 2,015 publicly traded European firms from 16 countries over 2000-2018, we find the presence of foreign directors on audit committees to have a significant negative impact on financial reporting quality (FRQ). The effect is found to be weaker in countries with strong investor protection. We find linguistic differences within audit committees an important explanation for the negative influence of foreign directors on FRQ. The results are robust to alternative FRQ measures and model specifications, including difference-in-differences and propensity score matching. While foreign directors on a corporate board may create value for the firm by boosting the advisory capacity of that board, recruiting a foreign director to that firm’s audit committee may compromise the board’s monitoring function and the firm’s FRQ.
The Impact of an Increase in Life Expectancy on Housing Prices in Malaysia

This paper aims to analyze the impact of life expectancy on housing prices in Malaysia. The study implements Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) estimation to investigate the short run and long run elasticities of the proposed model. The findings are consistent with the theoretical conjecture arising from the Life-Cycle Hypothesis; that is, an increase in life expectancy has a statistically significant impact on housing prices. In addition, other variables such as retired people, working people and GDP capita also shows significant impact towards housing prices. The results contribute to the study of the effect of life expectancy on housing prices in Malaysia.
Women's Pathways into Activism: Rethinking the Women's Environmental Justice Narrative in California's San Joaquin Valley

This article explores women’s pathways to participation in environmental justice advocacy in California’s San Joaquin Valley. Many scholars find that women become environmental justice activists according to a common set of experiences in which apolitical women personally experience an environmental problem that launches them into a life activism to protect the health of their families. Although a small group of the 25 women the author interviewed fit this description, overall the interviews reveal a much more diverse array of paths into environmental justice activism. The author’s data complicate the idea that environmental justice activism is the first political activity for most women environmental justice activists and that they are motivated to become activists primarily in order to protect the health of their families. The author discusses the significance of these findings and concludes with a call for scholars to revisit the question of women’s pathways into environmental justice activism.
Social Media Influencer Credibility and Social Influence on Intention to Use Fintech in Indonesia

Communication and information technology innovations have been applied to various fields of industry and utilized as an opportunity in financial business. One of these id Financial Technology (FinTech). FinTech companies mostly implement collaboration with social media influencers in their promotional and marketing strategies. This research aims to conduct investigate the impact of social media influencer’s credibility and social influence on the intention to use FinTech Service technology users. The quantitative research method used by distributing questionnaires online to 400 respondents and processed using Path Analysis. The result of this research indicate that social influence has significant impact compared to the source credibility of social media influencers on users’ intention to use of FinTech Service technology. Based on the results, concluded that the users of FinTech Service in Indonesia were more influenced by the suggestions and input from family and peers in choosing the type of FinTech Service application they used.
Predicting Default by Indian Firms using Statistical Methods

This study assesses the classification accuracies of two statistical methods namely, multiple discriminant analysis and logistic regression approach in default prediction. It uses a small sample of 32 India firms listed on Bombay Stock Exchange for the sample period of six years over 2010-11 to 2015-16. Two models have been built using the two statistical methods. Results of the study clearly indicate that there are no significant differences in the classification accuracies because of change in statistical methods. Different statistical measures clearly suggest that the two developed models have comparative classification accuracies in default prediction. However, the specification and robustness of logit model is found to be on lower side than that of the discriminant model contrary to large numbers of studies. The weaker model specification of logistic model may be result of small sample size.