Cross-border banking in Europe: An empirical investigation

This paper investigates bilateral trade in banking services within the European Union. The attention has been addressed to two main issues. First, to test the bank's motivations for setting up the different forms of overseas offices, and secondly, to assess the importance of barriers to entry across national European banking systems. Empirical results confirm the existence of different motivations for establishing representative offices, branches and subsidiaries in foreign locations. In addition, evidence has been achieved about the importance of non-regulatory barriers that could make difficult the existence of a single European market for banking services.Cross-border banking, barriers to entry and form of representation

The influence of size on cost behaviour associated with tactical and operational flexibility

This paper contributes with an empirical analysis, using a sample of farms, on the influence of size on cost behaviour under operational and tactical flexibility. Results indicate that small farms behave advantageously with respect to biggest farms in situations of operational and tactical flexibility. On the one hand, the increase in indirect costs with product diversification is higher in bigger farms than in smaller. On the other hand, while most farms are flexible enough to avoid cost stickiness, the biggest face considerable rigidities in downsizing indirect costs when activity decreases.Agricultural economics, Tactical flexibility, Operational flexibility, Cost behaviour, Size.

Audit tenure and audit Qualifications in a low litigation risk setting: An analysis of the Spanish market

The main role of the external auditor in the classical corporate governance scheme is to verify the accounting information provided by the firms' managers. Lengthy audit engagements are viewed as a main threat to preserve auditor independence, and therefore regulators have established mandatory rotation rules in many countries worldwide.Tenencia de auditorías y calificaciones de auditorías en un ambiente de bajo riesgo de litigios. Un análisis del mercado españo

The interaction effects of firm and partner tenure on audit quality

This paper investigates the impact of firm and partner tenure on audit quality, where audit quality is proxied by discretionary accruals. We study a sample of Spanish listed companies between 2005 and 2011 and address both the individual and the interaction effects of firm and partner tenure. Our study is motivated by the current debate, particularly intense at the EU level, on the impact of the auditor rotation regime on the quality of auditing. We find that, without considering the interaction effects, firm and partner tenure do not seem to play a relevant role as determinants of audit quality. Importantly, the interaction of firm and partner tenure shows stronger effects on audit quality than both forms of tenure separately considered. Finally, our analysis suggests that audit quality is maximized when medium firm and partner tenures interact. However, results for the interaction variables are sensitive to the accruals estimation method

Short-term effects of analysts recommendations in Spanish blue chips returns and trading volumes

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of stock recommendations in returns and trading volumes. Unlike previous research we have investigated the five most usual types of recommendations: buy, outperform, hold, underperform and sell. The methodology we propose is also different from previous studies. From our results we conclude that positive (negative) abnormal returns are associated to positive (negative and neutral) recommendations, the day of publication of the recommendation and the day before, but not the day after publication. We also document an asymmetry in the effect of recommendation on the stock trading volume, following the sign of the recommendation

Audit firm tenure and audit quality: A cross-European study

Directive 2014/56/EU and Regulation (EU) No. 537/2014, which came into effect in June 2016, introduced the mandatory rotation of audit firms after a maximum period of 10 years with the same client. We conduct a cross‐European study with the aim of assessing whether long audit firm tenures are associated with lower levels of audit quality. The sample for the study is based on the constituents of the Standard & Poor's Europe 350 index for the years between 2009 and 2016, and we utilize three different sets of proxies for audit quality: discretionary accruals, differences between reported earnings and earnings benchmarks, and accounting restatements. The main result of the study finds that companies with more than 10 years of tenure with their auditors do not have a lower audit quality than other firms. In fact, this study provides some evidence of a higher audit quality for these firms. The results are robust to various checks. Therefore, if there does not seem to be a problem of a lack of audit quality associated with long audit firm tenures, the necessity of establishing a maximum tenure, as the new European regulation does, may be questioned

Board gender diversity and firm solvency: Evidence from Scandinavia

The implementation of a board gender quota in Norway in 2006 resulted in an extraordinary increase in the number of female directors over a short period of time. As a result, previous studies have used this unique scenario to examine the effects of appointing female directors on various corporate outcomes, such as the cost of debt. Extending this line of research, this study explores whether the appointment of female directors to the boardroom has a significant impact on a firm's solvency. The empirical analysis draws on a sample of firms from Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden and implements difference-in-differences estimations. The extant evidence is scarce and inconclusive and, more importantly, has been obtained without controlling for endogeneity. Our findings strongly suggest that the solvency of Norwegian firms did not change significantly after the appointment of a large number of female directors. This result is robust to a battery of sensitivity checks

A critical approach to the evaluation of the quality of accounting research in the Spanish university system and its implications

Este trabajo analiza la conveniencia y consecuencias de los criterios de evaluación de la actividad investigadora en contabilidad establecidos por ANECA, concretándonos en los criterios para la acreditación de catedrático de universidad, así como el patrón y posibilidades de publicación de los académicos contables en España, Europa y a nivel mundial. Encontramos que los académicos del área contable tienen unas dificultades para publicar que son substancialmente superiores a las de los académicos de otras áreas de empresa. La mayor parte de los académicos afiliados a instituciones españolas que consiguen publicar en las principales revistas académicas contables recurren a co-autorías, principalmente estadounidenses y británicas, y a focalizar el contenido de sus trabajos en contextos y problemáticas no españolas. La normativa española de acreditación acentúa este comportamiento. Esta situación puede tener graves implicaciones para la supervivencia del área de conocimiento, el tratamiento de las temáticas y problemáticas específicamente ligadas al contexto español

Learning by Doing? Partners' Audit Experience and the Quality of Audit Services

Despite evidence suggesting that specialised knowledge should be more relevant than generic knowledge to explain different levels of audit quality across individual auditors, no study to date has addressed the respective impacts of the industry-specific and the generic audit experience of audit partners on the quality of audit services. Our study investigates this issue in the Spanish audit market. We proxy audit quality by discretionary accruals and by the opinion of the audit report, and differentiate among client-specific experience, industry-specific experience and generic audit experience of individual auditors. As expected, our results show significantly higher audit quality when the client is audited by a partner with stronger industry-specific audit experience. Furthermore, we observe that neither client-specific experience nor generic audit experience of audit partners are significant determinants of the quality of audit services provided by these auditors. These results may have some interesting implications for audit firms. Therefore, whereas some prior studies on the related issue of industry specialization point out that specialised knowledge is more relevant than generic knowledge to explain the quality of audit services, our findings suggest that specialised knowledge is, in fact, the only type of knowledge that seems to matter

CEO demographics and gender diversity in senior management in large Scandinavian firms

Purpose This study aims to investigate whether chief executive officer (CEO) demographics are associated with gender diversity in senior management in the Scandinavia region. Design/methodology/approach The research design draws on multivariate cross-sectional analysis. The demographic characteristics examined are gender, age and education. A total of six hypotheses are developed and tested. The sample includes the largest 106 public firms from Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. Findings Results show that firms with female CEOs have more women in senior management than other firms. However, neither age nor level of formal education of CEOs shows significant results, with the exception of CEOs holding MBA degrees, who are associated with fewer women in these positions. Interestingly, the association between educational background and gender diversity is principally driven by study-abroad experiences. Finally, results show that gender diversity in senior management has an important country component, whereas the industry component is negligible. Originality/value The relationship between managers’ demographics and gender diversity among subordinates is a relatively unexplored research issue, as previous works have focused on general comparisons between male and female managers. Furthermore, the Scandinavian context is particularly interesting as this region leads gender equality rankings