This dissertation examines the effect of gender diversity on firm risk and financial performance, and on the stock ownership preferences of institutional investors. For the firm risk and financial performance analysis, we use U.S. firms listed on the S&P 500 and NSE-listed Indian companies. The two samples provide our study with the ability to study gender diversity in a developed and emerging market with distinct economic frameworks, cultural traditions, and legal environments. Our empirical tests show that firms with more gender diversity are less risky and have higher financial performance than firms with less gender influence. These results are consistent with the notion that the addition of female directors increases the collective intelligence of the board and, thus, leads to higher quality deliberations and decision-making. The results are robust to propensity score matching which help control for endogeneity. Additionally, the results are robust to various measures of firm risk, financial performance, legal environments, industry and time fixed effects, and clustered standard errors. Furthermore, this dissertation examines the ownership preferences of institutional investors, a group of investors known for their ability to acquire private information and analyze publicly-disclosed information quickly. Researchers find that firms with female directors tend to disclose more firm-specific information and tend to serve on monitoring-related committees. As higher disclosure and more monitoring decreases institutional investors’ incentive to collect and profit from private information, we hypothesize that they will invest less in gender diverse firms. For our empirical tests we use the data on US firms. We find that institutional investors tend to hold less shares in firms with more gender diversity. These results are robust to industry and time fixed effects, heteroscedasticity, and serial correlation.

Thirty-four percent of people in the United States of America work for businesses that employ fewer than 100 people. However, many small business owners lack the strategies necessary to retain their valuable employees. Businesses that fail to retain valuable employees are as much as 28% less efficient. The purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to explore strategies small construction business owners use to retain their valuable employees. Contingency theory provided the conceptual framework. The participants were three owners of three small businesses in the construction industry located in Mississippi which implemented successful policies and procedures to retain their employees. The data sources for this study were semistructured interviews, financial statements, newspaper articles, websites, and social media. A thematic analysis was used to analyze the data. Three themes morphed to include challenging employees and reward them accordingly, mitigating unplanned turnover, and treating employees and others fairly. Potential implications for positive social change are that increased profits among small business owners may enable them to provide better benefits and pay and incentive increases to their employees. Small business owners with increased profits may also be better equipped to participate in community-based charitable organizations.

At the end of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st century, China implemented several new asset write-down regulations. This study addresses the claim that these regulations significantly enhanced the usefulness of financial statements for investors in China. The effect of the regulations on usefulness of financial statements has implications for financial accountants, standard-setters, educators, and auditors. This study derives and tests some of the empirical implications of the claim. I operationalize usefulness of accounting information in terms of the valuerelevance framework, in which information usefulness is construed as a tradeoff between relevance and reliability. These two dimensions are the primary criteria underlying the FASB’s Conceptual Framework for choosing alternative accounting rules. Asset write-down, if correctly applied to over-stated assets, should increase the decision relevance to investors; however, measurement errors due to either unintentional mistakes involving professional judgment or intentional misrepresentations involving earnings management may decrease the reliability of reported amounts. While there is substantial value-relevance research, the role of reliability is generally absent. Reliability of regression estimates, also known as measurement error, is often implicitly assumed and not measured. Following nonnested model selection techniques and relative measurement error research, I explicitly measure the relative reliability of asset write-down accounting in various valuation models. Therefore, this study contributes to value-relevance research. First, I examine the incremental value relevance of asset write-down estimates through their associations with market values: the ability of asset write-down provisions to explain market value of equity; the ability of asset write-down gains and losses to explain annual market-adjusted return; and the ability of both the above provisions and earnings to explain market value of equity. All the models provide evidence for value relevance of asset write-down estimates, indicating an acceptable level of information usefulness with mixed effects of relevance and reliability. I apply my tests to a balanced panel sample of exchange-listed firms in China over the period 1998-2001. The sample is limited to A shares—the shares subject to the new rules. Next, the above three valuation models are applied again in a reliability analysis. Model appropriateness tests, i.e. non-nested model tests, are used to answer the question: did asset write-down practices improve reliability in the valuation models? I find that the asset write-down practices are approximately comparable in reliability to historical cost methods in the balance sheet valuation model but somewhat less reliable in the income statement valuation model. The results are ambiguous when both assets and earnings are included in a third valuation model. My relative measurement error tests yield similar results. I conclude that the asset write-down regulations in China have not improved the usefulness of financial statements to investors in terms of reliability. Because the asset write-down rules are subject to interpretation and judgment, I consider the motivation for write-downs in the final part of the study. The results support a relation between discretionary motivations and the amount of current or cumulative write down. A sub-sample analysis shows that asset write-down rules improve usefulness of financial information in the absence of discretionary motivations.

This dissertation is composed by two essays that explore the changes in corporate governance around the passage of Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) 2002. In the first essay, I examine the relation between board structure and compensation as a bargaining game between the board and the CEO. Bargaining game theories describe an endogenous process of determining the structure of director and CEO compensation. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) altered the equilibrium of power between the board and CEO by changing the monitoring role of the board. SOX essentially provides a natural experiment to test how a shock to the bargaining game alters the balance of power between directors and the CEO. Using the ratio of director compensation to CEO compensation to proxy for bargaining power, I find a significant increase following the passage of SOX, consistent with directors gaining bargaining advantage. Moreover, firms with strong shareholder rights exhibit even greater evidence of power shifting to the directors. Overall, the results suggest that directors gain more power relative to the CEO in determining compensation plans and strong shareholder rights help firms to align directors' incentives with those of shareholders. In the second essay, I examine the relation between CEO compensation structure and acquirer returns. In the literature, researchers find that executive compensation structures influence corporate acquisition decisions. Equity-based executive compensation should reduce the non-value-maximizing behavior of acquiring managers. A series of corporate reforms such as SOX and the FASB expensing rule affected the structure of CEO equity-based compensation. I find a significant increase in CEO restricted stock compensation and a significant decrease in CEO option-based compensation following these reforms. I also find that CEOs with strong managerial power are more likely to receive more restricted stock in their compensation package after the 2002 reforms. Finally, I find a significant positive relation between the restricted stock compensation of acquiring firm CEOs and abnormal stock returns after 2002. This provides empirical support on the effectiveness of the shift away from options towards restricted stock in executive compensation packages. Restricted stock is associated with better merger decisions.

This dissertation is an analysis of the way businessmen relate to money. Specifically, it analyzes the factors contributing to the business sector's demand for funds during the period 1964-1966 in order to determine the role this demand played in the financial panic of 1966.

This study examines the influence of working capital management components on the profitability of South African firms listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (“JSE”). In addition, the study investigates how the influence of the selected working capital management components changes as macroeconomic conditions change. The study used accounting based secondary data obtained from I-Net Bridge and BF McGregor for 254 firms from 2004 to 2010. The Pooled Ordinary Least Squares (“OLS”) regression models were used in the analyses. The key findings from the study indicate the following: (1) that there exists a significant negative relationship between the net time interval between actual cash expenditures on a firm‟s purchase of productive resources and the ultimate recovery of cash receipts from product sales (cash conversion cycle) and profitability. This negative relationship suggests that managers can create value for the shareholders of the firm by reducing the cash conversion cycle; (2) that there exists a significant negative relationship between days sales in receivables and profitability. This indicates that slow collection of accounts receivables is associated with low profitability and suggests that corporate managers can improve profitability by reducing credit period granted to their customers; (3) that an increase in the length of a firm‟s cash (operating) cycle tends to increase profitability during an economic recession than during an economic boom. This result indicates that firms adopt a more generous trade credit policy during an economic recession than during a boom in an attempt to boost sales which would ordinarily dwindle during a recession. The implication of this positive relationship in comparison with a negative relationship between the normal cash conversion cycle and profitability is that corporate managers need to streamline their trade credit policy and change it accordingly as the macroeconomic environment changes in ensuring that the company‟s sales are not adversely impacted as economic conditions change. Furthermore, the study finds that there exists a highly significant negative relationship between profitability and the following respective ratios: days payables outstanding, current ratio, and capital structure. The negative relationship found between profitability and debt to equity ratio (used as a proxy for capital structure) indicates that South African firms‟ profitability tends to decrease at excessively high and increasing levels of debt.

Reflecting on the growing interest from scholars and practitioners and their awareness of the necessity to appreciate the involvement of the client in an audit process (Canning, Malsch & O’Dwyer, 2017), the aim of this study is to explore the importance of audit client commitment to comprehensive audit preparation, to improve the quality of a UK financial statements audit. This research is based on a qualitative approach employing semi structured interviews as a research method. Accordingly, interviews were undertaken with audit engagement leaders from a range of auditing firms as well as with finance directors from a range of audited clients. The perspectives as to the levels of preparedness for the first day of the financial statements audit commencing from each participant group were examined and were shown to reveal interesting results. The study unveiled the differences between what auditors and their clients perceived to be ‘ready’ for the financial statements audit. The availability of a completed set of financial statements when the auditors commence their audit has been identified as an issue that causes a significant amount of time pressures on the auditors. Additionally, the thematic analysis of data revealed that as a result of such pressures auditors were adopting practices whereby insufficient/substandard work was completed, which could potentially not only have an adverse effect on the overall quality of the audit, but also contribute to an inappropriate audit opinion being signed. Amendments to current auditing practices and the periods between a reporting period end and the audit work commencing to enhance audit quality was found to underpin the pressures on auditors when forming a time pressured audit opinion. This study of the challenges faced by auditors to plan and complete their audit with conflicting targets and time scales as well as the pressures felt by audit clients, provides audit preparedness specific, evidence based implications on which these may be surmounted to enable a quality, fully documented audit and supported audit opinion to be completed. This study addresses the pressing need to overcome the lack of theoretical discussions on the auditees’ perspectives on auditing practices, and their views on the specific factors enhancing audit quality. Based on the existing literature to date, no study has explored the “auditee” as a research object in scholarly discussions on the quality of a UK financial statements audit. The findings of this study, along with subsequent recommendations have relevance for the key stakeholders of audit engagements and regulators concerned with the enhancement of the quality of a UK financial statements audit, and for scholars interested in broadening their understanding of the audit process as a two-sided relationship.

The aim of my thesis is to describe financing of work capital in company JIP -- Papírny Větřní, a.s. by tolling and factoring. In theoretical part will be presented different methods of financing, like internal and external sources. The specific example of financing of work capital in the company will be described in a practical part with some chosen ways mentioned in theoretical part. Based on the facts will be analyzed the advantages and disadvantages for company JIP -- Papírny Větřní, a.s. and its investor. There will be done also the analysis of impacts on cash flow of the company.

In this paper, I analyze how firm attributes such as their age, industry, nature of industry, spinoff status and debt ratio influence venture-capital financing decision. I look at a sample of 280 firms that went public in the United States between 2015- 2019. This paper finds that firm age and debt are negatively related to the likelihood of being venture-capital backed. It also finds that firms in technology and biotechnology industries are more likely to be backed by a venture-capitalist.

The shift to defined contribution plans from defined benefit plans have left future retirees concerned about having the necessary funds to retire. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore how investment behaviors have changed due to losses in retirement accounts because of the global financial crisis of 2008. Building upon the conceptual framework of attribution theory and risk perception theory, this study explored what might encourage future retirees to use the stock market for retirement. A purposeful sample of 20 Hampton Roads, Virginia residents who held retirement accounts prior to the financial crisis of 2008 consented to interviews about their retirement planning. Through open coding of the interview data, themes emerged on the need for financial education and a fear of losing retirement savings. Increasing education regarding retirement accounts and reducing the fear of losing retirement savings encourages the use of the stock market in retirement planning. The findings suggested social change implications as future retirees increase use of retirement plans and reduce their reliance on public assistance programs.