67 research outputs found
Health Care Regulation and the Operating Efficiency of Hospitals: Evidence from Taiwan
No full text[[abstract]]Using data from the Annual Survey of Hospitals compiled by the Department of Health in Taiwan for years 1994 through 1997, we employed Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to evaluate the impact of a National Health Insurance (NHI) Program on the operating efficiency of district hospitals in Taiwan. We find that, on average, efficiency of district hospitals in Taiwan decreased following the implementation of the NHI Program. Our results are robust to the inclusion of control variables that have been shown to affect hospital operating performance in prior research, and alternative efficiency measurements
The Impact of National Health Insurance Plan on Public Hospital Operation Efficiency –The Evidence of ROC-Taiwan
No full textProductivity Growth in Public Accounting Industry: The Role of Information Technology and Human Capital.
No full textMD&A Disclosure Tone and Audit Pricing
Get PDFThis dissertation examines whether a qualitative component of the common information set between auditors and their clients is used in audit pricing decisions. I specifically focus on information contents of managers' disclosure tone within the management discussion and analysis (MD&A) sections of annual reports. I find a significant negative association between audit fees and optimistic disclosure tone. This finding is consistent with prior research that auditors use client specific information in audit pricing decisions. Further analysis shows that in high litigation environment the tone fee relation is stronger. This paper contributes to the current audit fee literature by documenting the effect of qualitative information, such as the disclosure tone, on the pricing decision by auditors.Ph.D., Accounting -- Drexel University, 201
Incentives for the Audit Committee to Signal their Monitoring Activities using Voluntary Disclosure in the Audit Committee Report
No full textThis dissertation considers whether the audit committee report is used as a signal for the audit committees monitoring effort. Prior audit committee report research suggests that a shift toward greater voluntary disclosure occurred after the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (Pandit et al. 2006). Using agency theory and signaling theory, this dissertation considers several incentives for voluntary disclosure for audit committees to signal their monitoring activity to shareholders: their financial expertise, their reputation, and their compensation structure. Studying a high litigation industry, this dissertation tests whether these incentives are associated with greater voluntary disclosure, providing evidence that both financial expertise and compensation structure are significantly associated with voluntary disclosure. Building upon a small stream of audit committee report literature, this dissertation contributes to the literature by studying voluntary disclosure in a non-traditional setting and providing evidence that audit committees may use their report to signal their unobservable monitoring effort.Ph.D., Accounting -- Drexel University, 201
Audit Market Concentration, Audit Fees, and Audit Quality: Evidence from China
No full textWe investigate the effects of audit market concentration on audit fees and audit quality in China, where competition is intense and the legal environment is relatively weak compared with developed countries. Analyzing 12,334 firm-year observations for the period 2001 to 2011, we find a significant positive relation between concentration and audit fees. Path analysis shows that concentration improves client earnings quality and reduces the need for auditors to issue modified audit opinions through increased audit fees. Additional analysis indicates that the increased audit fees and client earnings quality resulting from increased concentration are associated with a lower likelihood of executives and auditors being sanctioned by regulators for audit failures. Together, our results suggest that concentration improves audit quality indirectly through increased audit fees and this positive indirect effect offsets the negative direct effect of concentration on audit quality. By separating the direct and the indirect effect of concentration on audit quality, our study would explain why previous studies that do not have a separation document mixed evidence. Our findings inform regulators that actions taken to eliminate the indirect effect of concentration, for example restricting the upper bound of audit fees, could produce unintended outcomes such as decreased audit quality.Taiwan National Science Council [NSC 102-2410-H-006-006]SSCIARTICLE2121-1453
The Effects of Corporate Litigant Counterparties Sharing an Auditor
No full textI find economically significant effects to interfirm litigation disclosure and outcomes when both corporate counterparties share the same auditor. Shared auditors have concern to mitigate biased disclosure of an event occurring between their adversarial clients. I find defendant litigants sharing an auditor with their counterparty are more likely to recognize litigation threats in their financial disclosure and are less likely to disclose, expectedly biased, predictive loss estimates. In testing outcomes of litigation, I do not find evidence consistent with shared auditors acting as information intermediaries between counterparties during legal arbitration, which would result in shorter litigation duration or greater likelihood of negotiated settlement. However, I find support for their monitoring role, ex-post litigation, as a mutually shared and trusted agent. This is evidenced by an increased likelihood that settlement contracts include beneficial provisions that extend beyond loss payments (e.g. licensing agreements, partnerships, loans) which are aided by increased monitoring of contractual fulfillment and the application of consistent accounting treatment for contractual terms. Additional tests support these findings.Ph.D., Accounting -- Drexel University, 201
INFORMATION ASYMMETRY BETWEEN PRINCIPAL AND AGENT IN SOME PERFORMANCE EVALUATION MODELS
Get PDFThe research question on problems that involves information asymmetry has been drawing more and more attention since the past decades, and in particular, two of the pioneers Bengt Holmström and Oliver Hart) in this field won the Nobel Prize of Economics in 2016. With the emergence of information economics, accounting researchers started focusing on the information asymmetry problems, with a particular interest and emphasis on moral hazard problems, within the firm. In this essay, we intend to fill the blank in this area by investigating some specific information asymmetry problems in managerial accounting under the presence of both moral hazard and adverse selection, or moral hazard and post-contract information asymmetry, respectively. The first study analyzes the expected value of information about an agent’s type in the presence of moral hazard and adverse selection. The value of the information decreases in the variability of output and the agent’s risk aversion, two factors that are typically associated with the severity of the moral hazard problem. However, the value of the information about agent type first increases but ultimately decreases in the severity of adverse selection. The second study draws attention to the tradeoffs associated with relying on pre-contracting ability measures in the design of executive compensation schemes. We show that the more sensitive of the ability signal to ability the more weight should be placed optimally, and the more precise of the ability signal the more weight should be placed optimally, in accordance with the informativeness principal. We further prove that under a broad class of distributions a linear aggregation of multiple pieces of pre-contracting information is sufficient for contracting purposes without loss of generality. The third study investigates three mechanisms of organizational control: outcome control (contracting on the outcome), effort control (contracting on the signal of action), and clan control (employing an agent whose preferences are partially aligned with the principal’s goal through a socialization process). In doing so, we expand the standard agency framework by introducing the concept of other-regarding preference and clan control to provide new insights into organizational control design.Business Administration/Accountin
On the determinants of non-market strategy: The separations mechanism and cost shifting in the telecommunications industry
No full text- …
