This study investigates the relationship between Confucianism and auditor judgment. Using a sample of Chinese listed firms from 2006 to 2019, we find that the Confucian atmosphere in auditors' hometowns is positively associated with their audit adjustments. The mechanism analyses show that Confucianism in auditors' hometowns can influence auditor morality and further affect their judgment. We also find that the positive relationship between Confucianism in auditors' hometowns and audit adjustments is reinforced by auditor exposure to strong Confucian atmospheres in their places of education and workplaces but weakened by Western culture diffusion. Moreover, auditors who are more influenced by Confucianism are associated with more improvements in client financial reporting quality, more upward and downward adjustments, more small and large adjustments and more audit effort but not higher audit fees. Overall, this study provides evidence that supports the imprinting effect of traditional Confucianism on auditors.

This paper examines the influence of enterprise digital transformation on safety production performance. Our results indicate that digital transformation significantly improves the safety performance of China's listed enterprises. Furthermore, a series of cross-sectional analyses confirm that the effect of digital transformation on safety production performance is more prominent not only in regions with higher levels of marketisation and stronger enforcement of safety production systems but also in markets with higher competition and stronger supervision. Moreover, the proposed effect is also more significant in corporations with higher capital intensity and lower financing constraints. The mechanism tests reveal that digital transformation improves the quality of internal control and optimises corporate innovation, thereby improving the safety production performance. Our findings highlight the impact of digital technology application on enterprise production safety performance, serving as a valuable reference for promoting the development and implementation of digital technologies in the field of production safety.

Synopsis The research problem This study examines whether international trade friction has an impact on firm disclosure tone. Motivation The past two decades have witnessed a large amount of trade friction worldwide. Under this background, the impact of trade friction on microenterprises is of great concern to researchers. Previous studies have shown that trade friction is related to firm operating or financial activities such as performance, investment, stock prices, loan financing, and employment. However, there are no published papers about how trade friction impacts the disclosure behaviors of firms subject to the friction. This study attempts to fill this void by investigating whether firms manage disclosure tone when they are subject to trade friction. The test hypotheses We test two competing hypotheses in this study. Our first hypothesis is that firms impacted by trade friction increase the positive tone of their information disclosure. Second, firms impacted by trade friction decrease the positive tone of their information disclosure. Target population This study should be of interest to firm managers, investors, creditors, and policy makers. Adopted methodology Ordinary least squares regressions and archival data. Analyses We conducted this study by using a sample of listed firms in China. Over the past two decades, China has been the world’s largest country subject to trade frictions. In addition, China’s weak institutional environment and language habit provide an ideal setting for this study. Firm disclosure tone is measured as the frequency difference between the positive and negative words scaled by total words in an annual report. We tested whether there is a positive/negative association between trade friction and firm disclosure tone. Findings We find that firms strategically increase their positive tone in annual reports when they are subject to trade friction. Further analyses reveal that the impact of trade friction on disclosure tone is more pronounced for smaller firms, firms with more financial constraints, and firms with less analyst following. In addition, this impact is attenuated when firms have stronger corporate governance. Finally, we show that using more positive tones help firms subject to trade friction improve short-term market valuation, obtain more bank loans, and have lower cost of debt.

Given the important role of individual auditors in the audit process, appropriate staffing is an essential issue in audit firms. Using unique audit data for both listed and private companies in China, we define the downward mismatch between auditors and clients as an inappropriate assignment of the engagement auditors who are supposed to serve only private companies, but sign the audit reports of public companies. We find that the downward mismatch leads to poor audit quality. The results are robust to various tests, including using alternative proxies, adopting the Propensity Score Matching (PSM) procedure, and controlling for auditor-client fixed effects and audit firm-level mismatch. Additional analyses reveal that the negative effect of downward mismatch on audit quality is less pronounced for audit firms with more education and training expenditures, with more informatisation expenditures, and with more partners available. Moreover, this negative effect is more pronounced when clients' business is more complex. Our findings shed light on the importance of staffing assignment decisions within the audit firm.

2018年12月7日,财政部修订印发《企业会计准则第21号——租赁》,对承租人和出租人的确认、计量、列报和披露要求进行了规范.通过纵向(国内)和横向(国际)两个维度探讨我国租赁准则的演变过程及其与国际对应准则的密切联系,以揭示租赁准则的修订意义及其国际趋同的价值内涵.纵向阐述我国租赁准则的演变历程,以展现与该准则相关的社会经济的发展与变化背景;横向对比我国新租赁准则与国际租赁准则、美国租赁准则,找出差异并分析原因.在此基础上,进一步阐释我国新租赁准则带来的影响以及面临的一系列现实挑战,建议企业及时做好租赁计划,避免因新租赁准则的实施导致财务指标大幅波动以及财务风险的增加.