• Login
    View Item 
    •   DSpace@RPI Home
    • Rensselaer Libraries
    • RPI Theses Online (Complete)
    • View Item
    •   DSpace@RPI Home
    • Rensselaer Libraries
    • RPI Theses Online (Complete)
    • View Item
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    Three essays in financial accounting

    Author
    Fang, Ming
    View/Open
    177046_Fang_rpi_0185E_10813.pdf (2.414Mb)
    Other Contributors
    Francis, Bill; Wu, Qiang; Clark, Brian J.; Hasan, Iftekhar;
    Date Issued
    2015-12
    Subject
    Management
    Degree
    PhD;
    Terms of Use
    This electronic version is a licensed copy owned by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY. Copyright of original work retained by author.;
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    URI
    https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.13015/1612
    Abstract
    Chapter three investigates how politics influence judicial outcomes from the perspective of corporate litigations. First, I find that firms and individuals receive lower monetary and non-monetary penalties if the Judge is from the political party that they support. This relationship is stronger for individual respondents than firm respondents, suggesting that politics plays an even bigger role when an actual person is involved. Second, I find that firms that make political contributions enjoy significantly lower monetary penalties than firms that do not make political contributions. Conditional on non-zero political contributions, Democrat firms receive lower monetary penalties than Republican firms holding all else equal. Third, Republican Judges tend to sentence higher non-monetary penalties than Democrat Judges, but they do not differ significantly on monetary penalties. In addition, the overall political environment moderates our findings. If the president in office is Republican, the effect of political contributions on reducing monetary penalties is stronger, and the tendency that Republican Judges have towards higher non-monetary penalties is more evident.; This dissertation consists of three distinct but related essays examining financial accounting issues by emphasizing the impact of the “human” element.; Chapter one examines the impact that the social networks of top executives and directors have on firms’ earnings management. I find that well-connected (i.e. central) firms are more aggressive in managing earnings through both accruals and real activities. Firm pairs that are socially connected to each other have similar magnitudes of earnings management and similar changes in earnings management over time compared to firm pairs that do not share a connection. Furthermore, the magnitude of earnings management decreases after a socially connected executive or director dies. In addition, among different types of social networks, professional networks have the strongest impact on both discretionary accruals and real earnings management; non-professional networks from activities such as charity and clubs only affect real earnings management but not discretionary accruals; school networks do not have significant effects on either. Finally, CEOs’ network centrality is associated with both high accrual- and real-based earnings management; CFOs’ network centrality has a even larger positive effect on accruals than CEOs’ network centrality but no influence over real-based earnings management. Collectively my findings suggest that social network is an important determinant of earnings management.; Chapter two studies the influence of CFO social networks on firm tax avoidance. I construct the social networks of the CFOs of US companies based on their employment history, education, and non-professional activities. I find that firms with central (well-connected) CFOs have lower effective tax rates (ETRs) than firms with non-central CFOs. Moreover, the ETR of a firm decreases if the CFO centrality of the firm increases. Furthermore, firm pairs have similar ETRs if their CFOs are socially connected, suggesting tax related information exchange among CFOs through social networks. The past ETRs of central CFOs predict the ETRs of non-central CFOs that they are socially connected with, suggesting that non-central CFOs follow central CFOs for tax planning. Overall, my findings suggest that socially well-connected CFOs have more information and resources to adopt aggressive tax strategies than not-well-connected CFOs.;
    Description
    December 2015; School of Management
    Department
    Lally School of Management;
    Publisher
    Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY
    Relationships
    Rensselaer Theses and Dissertations Online Collection;
    Access
    Restricted to current Rensselaer faculty, staff and students. Access inquiries may be directed to the Rensselaer Libraries.;
    Collections
    • RPI Theses Online (Complete)

    Browse

    All of DSpace@RPICommunities & CollectionsBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsThis CollectionBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjects

    My Account

    Login

    DSpace software copyright © 2002-2022  DuraSpace
    Contact Us | Send Feedback
    DSpace Express is a service operated by 
    Atmire NV