In this study, we explore the expanded role of chief financial officers (CFOs) in facilitating corporate disclosure by examining how their accounting expertise influences the resolution process of Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) comment letters issued on 10-K reports. Using CFO professional profile data collected extensively through EDGAR, Lexis-Nexis, and several online searches, we find that CFO accounting expertise improves the resolution of SEC comment letters by reducing the remediation costs and the likelihood of unfavorable resolution outcomes. We also show that the effect of CFO accounting expertise is more pronounced when the CFO's involvement in the resolution process is greater, and the SEC comment letter includes comments on accounting topics. Our findings are robust to a battery of robustness tests. Overall, this study highlights the importance of CFOs' role and function in regulatory compliance.JEL codes: G14; G30; M40; M41; M48

ABSTRACT Despite the growing interest in blockchain (BC) technology, recent research shows mixed perceptions due to its risks and returns. We utilize event study methodology to examine overall market reactions and to delineate how specific contexts associated with BC technology influence the market reactions. Using 149 BC technology adoptions announced between January 2015 and December 2019, we find positive abnormal returns, reflecting investors’ optimistic perception toward BC technology adoption. Specifically, we find that abnormal returns from BC technology are higher when used in a transformative strategic role and offered by leading vendors, suggesting that investors view this adoption as a value-enhancing activity. Our results are robust to the use of an alternative sample and different methods of measuring variables. Overall, our study provides insights for academics and practitioners to better understand the market value of BC technology adoptions. Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources cited in the text.

This study empirically examines the relation between blockchain adoption and investment efficiency. Using a difference-in-differences research design with a sample of U.S. listed firms that indicate adoption of blockchain in business processes in 8-K filings during 2014 to 2019, we find that relative to non-adopters, blockchain adopters exhibit an increase in investment efficiency after the implementation of blockchain technology. Our findings suggest that blockchain adoption improves information quality which in turn affects firms’ price informativeness and information environments, and through which it enhances investment efficiency. Our study provides the first empirical evidence on the real effects of blockchain adoption. The findings are relevant to business communities given that improved efficiency is one of the main goals that many companies seek to achieve from adopting blockchain.

We propose new measures of financial disclosure quality based on XBRL standard and extension tag counts. XBRL is designed to allow users to analyze more financial statement detail, thereby increasing reporting transparency. Thus, firms that use more XBRL standard tags should produce more detailed and comparable financial reports. To test this assertion, we examine the association between XBRL tag counts and stock return synchronicity, which measures the market's reaction to the quality of firms' disclosures. We find that firms that use more standard taxonomy tags in their 10-K reports have higher stock return synchronicity after the 10-K filing. However, we find that stock return synchronicity decreases as XBRL extension tag counts increase, suggesting that the use of extension tags reduces disclosure quality. Our findings contribute to the growing body of research on XBRL disclosure. Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources cited in the text.

Using 86,891 tweets, from the official corporate Twitter accounts of 715 unique firms, this study examines whether and how managers strategically attract and distract investors' attention from corporate news through Twitter. We find that firms with good earnings news use Twitter to post more earnings-related information directly, whereas firms with bad earnings news post more non-earnings-related information on Twitter. We further find that depending on earnings performance firms strategically choose the format of tweets (qualitative or quantitative) and the tone of earnings tweets (positive or negative) to attract investors' attention to good news or distract investors' attention from bad news. Our results are robust to difference-in-differences (DID), alternative sample periods, and different variable specifications. Our findings provide empirical evidence for investors and regulators regarding current practices in corporate information on Twitter.

Data security breaches (DSBs) are increasing investor and regulator pressure on firms to improve their IT governance (ITG) in an effort to mitigate the related risk. We argue that DSB risk cannot be mitigated by one executive alone, but, rather, is a shared leadership responsibility of the top management team (TMT) (i.e., Chief Executive Officer [CEO], Chief Financial Officer [CFO], and Chief Information Officer [CIO]). Our results suggest that IT-savvy CEOs see technologies related to mitigating DSBs as a top-three most important type of digital methodology for their firm. Similarly, the results related to CFOs with IT expertise single out the critical investment in controls designed to prevent DSBs. Our strong findings for CIOs on the TMT add to the related guidance from COBIT 5 for information security and consistently suggest that they are the key executive for securing IT systems. Finally, our granular explanation of each executive’s DSB-related responsibility could potentially provide firms the start of a governance-led roadmap for compliance to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s and Justice Department’s cyber regulations.

Data analytics (DA) technology has emerged as a critical component in sustaining and transforming business processes, which enhances agility and control environment. DA allows a firm to develop real-time solutions for anomalies or unusual trends of the provided service or products, to reduce business risks, and to conduct advanced sentiment analyses and thereby enhance customer relationships. DA also enables a firm to examine the entire population of transactions in a timely fashion, effectively reducing sampling risks, identifying anomalies, and improving both the quality and the efficiency of transaction testing. DA technology can result in improved understanding of a firm’s operations and associated business risks, increased potential for detecting errors, and enhanced communications with those charged with governance of internal and external entities, which lead to improved overall firm performance. Thus, issues pertaining to the potential returns and risks associated with DA have become subjects of research.

ABSTRACTWe examine whether the use of eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) for financial reporting (i.e., interactive data submissions) reduces earnings management during the period of XBRL implementation by the SEC. Using a sample of mandated XBRL filers, we compare the magnitude of absolute discretionary accruals in the XBRL adoption quarters with that in the non‐adopting quarters. We also take advantage of staggered (three‐stage phase‐in) XBRL implementations to perform difference‐in‐differences analyses. Our results show that absolute discretionary accruals decrease significantly from the pre‐ to the post‐XBRL period, suggesting that XBRL adoption constrains earnings management via discretionary accrual choices. Our analyses further reveal that the use of standardized official XBRL elements significantly reduces the levels of discretionary accruals, while the use of customized extension elements does not, suggesting that the former discourages accrual‐based earnings management, while the latter does not. Our results are robust to a variety of sensitivity checks.

Over the last three decades, information technology (IT) has emerged as a critical component in sustaining and transforming business processes, which enhances agility and control environment. Data analytics often refer to IT and processes that support reporting, statistical analyses, and data mining. The use of data analytics applications can help firms to sense changes in the market, to improve their response speed and efficacy, to reduce business risks, and to increase competitive advantages. Given the growth in the use of data analytics, it has become imperative in many organizations for helping firms make better, more informed and often faster decisions. However, not all firms investing in data analytics improve their control systems because of significant risks and uncertainties in governance, economy, and environment.

In current business climate, a firm's information systems security is no longer independent from the industry's broader security environment. A question arises, then, whether stock market values reflect the interdependence of security breaches and investments. In this paper, we used the event study methodology to investigate how a firm's security breaches and IT security investments influence its competitors. We collected and reviewed 118 information security breaches and 98 IT security investment announcements from 2010 to 2017. We found substantial evidence supporting our hypothesis that information security breaches do, indeed, have a competition effect: when one firm is breached, its competitors have opportunities to absorb market power. For the IT security investment announcements, however, we observed the positive externalities, or contagion effect, in play: market investors feel that the security investments made by one firm increase the security level of the entire network, and hence, competitors also get benefits. Additionally, we found that the competition effect was higher when the breaches occurred after the preceding security investments than when there were no preceding investments before the breaches.

Given the importance of auditors’ assessing business risks and evaluating internal controls, we investigate whether an audit firm’s industry expertise, tenure, and size can help its auditors better understand external and internal threats faced by the client with less effort. Using reported information security breach incidents from 2004 to 2013, we find that, consistent with prior studies, audit fees are higher after the occurrence of an information security breach. However, such an association is negatively moderated when the audit firm has industry-specific expertise, longer experience with the client, and is one of the Big 4 firms. Our results suggest that because of their better knowledge about a specific industry, increased familiarity with the client’s operations, and more resources to understand a client’s vulnerabilities and/or information security policies and procedures, these auditors are more capable of assessing the potentially changing information security risks implied by the occurrence of information security breach incidents. Our results are robust to a variety of sensitivity checks.

ABSTRACT The adoption of innovative technologies holds both promise and risk. We focus on the voluntary adoption of innovative financial reporting and disclosure technologies (IFRDTs) using the voluntary adoption of XBRL as an exemplar for our study. In particular, since IFRDTs have both financial reporting (FR) and information technology aspects (IT), we examine the impact of IT and FR competencies possessed by members of the top management team (CEOs and CFOs) on the voluntary adoption of XBRL beyond the impact of environmental, organizational, technological, and financial characteristics of their firms. We find that the voluntary adoption of XBRL was positively associated with higher levels of IT competencies; but, surprisingly, voluntary adoption of this innovation was negatively associated with higher levels of FR competencies, regardless of the functional role played by the executive. These results extend the literature on the influence of management characteristics on corporate decisions and can be used as a guide for investigating top executives' roles in the voluntary adoption of other IFRDTs, such as the use of social media for financial reporting or voluntary standardized business reporting in jurisdictions where such reporting is not mandatory.

ABSTRACT We examine how the adoption of the eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) for financial reporting impacts the pricing of bank loans. Using a sample of loans granted to U.S. borrowers from 2007–2013, we find that the adoption of XBRL is associated with a reduction in loan spreads. We further find that the reduction in loan spreads is greater for borrowers who have information that is inherently costlier to process. Results from a difference-in-differences specification along with other alternative research designs provide similar inferences. Subsequent to XBRL adoption, we further show that loan spreads are lower for firms that use more standardized XBRL tags and greater for those that use more extension elements. Overall, our results are consistent with the view that the XBRL mandate brings about an environment that enables lenders to gather and process information in a timelier manner and at a lower cost. JEL Classifications: M41; K22.

In 2010 the SEC began requiring registered firms to provide detail-tagged footnote information in XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language). As expected, the number of total tags soared due to this requirement. This study investigates whether financial analysts' information environment improved after this rule went into effect. It is possible that having footnote information detail-tagged reduces the cost to process footnote information. Our findings show that analysts' forecast error and dispersion for the next quarter earnings estimates decreased after the SEC requirement went into effect. We also find that the number of analysts following firms increased after mandatory detailed tagging was adopted. This is consistent with the notion that detailed tagging of footnote information reduces financial analysts' information processing costs. However, when firms use customized (as opposed to standardized) footnote tags, forecast error and dispersion are less likely to decrease. This suggests that regulators may need to limit firms' ability to use customized tags. Last, our results suggest that the benefits of detail-tagged footnotes increases over time as analysts become more comfortable with the information.

Using a sample of S&P 1500 firms from 2005-2013, we investigate the independent relationships of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) IT expertise, Chief Financial Officer (CFO) IT expertise, and board level technology committees with data security breaches. Overall, our results indicate that firms that either employ a CEO with IT expertise or implement a technology committee are more likely to detect and report breaches. Further, firms that employ a CFO with IT expertise are less likely to report a breach, suggesting that these firms are better at preventing breaches. The aggregate findings build on the extant corporate governance and risk management literatures.