فصلنامه بررسی های حسابداری و حسابرسی
پیاپی 98 (زمستان 1398)

The capital structure and financing method and accordingly the factors affecting them are issues that have always been important for companies and stakeholders. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of managers' overconfidence on corporate leverage and the moderating effect of institutional ownership on the relationship between managers' overconfidence and corporate leverage.

The study used a sample of 151 companies listed in the Tehran Stock Exchange for the period 2008-2017. In order to test the research hypotheses, multiple regression was used.

The results show that the managers' overconfidence and institutional ownership have a positive and significant impact on the leverage. In addition, the evidence shows that institutional ownership has a negative and significant impact on the relationship between managers' overconfidence and corporate leverage.

Managers who are optimistic about the future of the company, while feeling that their stock will not be properly valued by the market due to their optimism, they will seek financing through borrowing when needed. Companies also have different potential opportunities for financing due to the composition of their capital structure. Some companies are more likely to attract more foreign resources than political firms with less size and credibility due to their political influence, their size and credibility. In addition, with the increase in institutional ownership due to their active oversight, manager decisions will be made to improve company performance and avoid decisions that compromise company performance.

The cost of common stock is called the minimum expected rate of return of investors. The cost of common stock is one of the most important means in many financial and management decisions, that are influenced by several factors like liquidity, financial leverage, operating cash flow, company size and profitability. Information ambiguity increases the investment risk and make the cost of equity capital increased. Growth of value relevance of earning decreases the investment risk and consequently make the cost of common stock decreased. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to present an empirical test to compare the efficiency of two cost of capital models as Gordon and Olson Junter under the influence of information ambiguity and value relevance of earning.

For this purpose, this study was conducted with 104 sample companies during 7 years from 2012 to 2018, using descriptive analysis with Kruskal Wallis test.

To this end, this study was concluded that two models of Olson Junter and Gordn have accepted reliability index and validity at different level. There is significant difference between two models.

The results showed that Olson Junter's model performs more efficient than Gordon's model at high- low risk levels. Consequently, cost of common stock of the former model would be useful in decision making through portfolio hedging og potential losses.

Firms with prospective strategy have a higher risk and lower financial stability than firms with a defensive strategy, which can affect the audit process. Since such companies are exposed to greater risk of auditing, their audit operations are conducted with a higher degree of conservatism. Applying more conservatism to prospective companies will increase the volume of auditing operations and further professional uncertainty in making audit judgments, which may ultimately influence the type of auditor's opinion, the number of audit report clauses, and the auditor's fees. Therefore, the main purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between the type of business strategy of the firm with the auditor's report (type of comment and number of auditor's report) and audit fees with emphasis on both prospective and defensive strategies.

To achieve the purpose of the study, 127 companies listed in the Tehran Stock Exchange during 2011-2017 were selected. The research hypotheses were tested on the basis of multiple linear regression and logit regression.

Findings show that there is a significant negative relationship between aggressive (forward) strategy and unadjusted audit report (acceptable). In fact, adjusted audit reports (contingent, declined and non-commented) are more likely to be issued by aggressive (prospective) companies. Also, there is a positive and significant relationship between defensive strategy and unadjusted audit report. That is, adjusted audit reports (conditional, declined, and non-commented) are less likely to be issued by companies with a defensive strategy. The results also show that there is a positive and significant relationship between aggressive (forward) strategy and the number of audit report bets but there is a negative and significant relationship between defensive strategy and the number of audit report bets. The results show that there is a positive and significant relationship between aggressive strategy and audit fee, but there is a negative and significant relationship between defensive strategy and audit fee.

The findings of this study indicate that business strategies can be one of the factors that auditors consider in their audit reporting and remuneration strategies. Such a finding can be helpful to corporate auditors and managers.

It is widely believed that every human being naturally considers his or her own interests to be the priority of others, that is, instinctively and unconsciously pursuing his or her own benefits. However, according to Altruism theory, women, due to their different ethical characteristics, prioritize the interests of others and may improve it by taking into account the interests and rights of others in terms of social responsibility. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of gender diversity on corporate social responsibility.

For this purpose, 131 companies listed in the Tehran Stock Exchange during the years 2012 to 2017 were selected and to measure gender diversity, three variables of gender presence of female member in 1. Audit Committee, 2. Board of Directors and 3. Chief financial officer were used. To test the research hypotheses, regression analysis with panel data was used.

The empirical results of the research show that the presence of a female member in the audit committee, board of directors and the position of chief financial officer had a significant and positive impact on disclosure of corporate social responsibility, which is in accordance with the aims of the theory of Altruism.

Based on research findings, the presence of a female representative in a company would provide an environment in which the company would take steps towards social responsibility and meet the supra-institutional values, due to principle's superior talent and her senior management competence.

One of the most important sources of information available to users is the information disclosed by companies. Managers can express their expectations of the future performance using positive and negative words in written messages, or they might consider it as a low-cost strategy for gaining personal benefit. The purpose of this research is to get a good understanding of this kind of behavior.

Disclosure tone was measured in the written messages of 1445 reports including: the first prediction of earning per share, the report of activities of board of directors, and the report of the disclosure of significant information, using specialized financial and general words and based on the three simple, balanced and unexpected approaches for 125 companies during the years 2012 to 2016. The test of research hypotheses was done using the generalized method of moments regression with dynamic mixed data and logit regression.

The results showed that there was a correlation between the use of more positive specialized words together with the proper return on assets in the current year and future performance. The higher use of this words, together with a higher use of neutral words, caused an improvement in the future return on assets. But the higher use of positive general words was correlated with a decrease in the future return on assets. The findings showed that specialized words can better explain the future performance of the company.

Specialized words are a proper tool for providing information about future performance and coordinating managers and investors’ expectations, and in comparison with general words, just by themselves or together with neutral words, have a higher predictive power of future performance.

NowadaysOwnersusescorporategovernancemechanismstoreducethe opportunistic behavior of managers and decrease credit rating level. Accordingly, the purpose of this article is to review the effect of real earnings management on the relationship between corporate governance quality and credit rating.

In this research,the data of the 144 firms listed in the Tehran stock exchange for the period of 2010to 2018 has been gathered and analyzed.To measure the credit rating we use Emerging Market Credit Scoring Model. Also, real earnings management measured by Roychowdhury model. Data obtained from Rahaward Novin software, firms financial statements and Codal system. Furthermore, to test the hypotheses of this research we utilized panel data approach and multiple regression model with GLS method.

The results show that the quality of corporate governance has a negative influence on the real earnings management; In other words, the higher quality of corporate governance decreases the opportunistic behavior of managers. In addition, the quality of corporate governance has a positive effect on credit rating but it is not statistically significant. Also results show that the real earnings management has significant and negative effect on credit rates. Finally, the results of the sobel test indicate that real earnings management has mediating effects on relationship between corporate governance quality and credit rates. Based on the results of research, the quality of corporate governance has indirect effect on credit rating through real earnings management. In other words, the quality of corporate governance through reducing opportunistic behavior of managers, leads to better credit rating.

From the negative effect of real earnings management on credit rates, we can conclude that the manager uses real activities earnings management for their impulses which will be detrimental to the stakeholders. So, when manager manipulates accounting earnings by real activities earnings management, the information asymmetry between managers and stakeholders increases hereupon systematic risk of companies increased. To preserve the interests of all stakeholders, corporate governance mechanisms are used. The corporate governance mechanisms can decline information asymmetry hereupon decrease systematic risk of companies. By applying strong corporate governance mechanisms, the opportunistic behavior of managers would reduce. Since real activities earnings management increase the risk of the corporation, with applying strong corporate governance mechanisms, opportunistic behavior of managers reduced and credit rating increased. With this regards, we can conclude that, when managers supervised by the strong corporate governance mechanisms, the opportunistic behavior of them decreases. Thus information provided had less bias. Eventually, this leads to the correct decision making by market participants.

According to Beneish (1999), “earnings manipulation happens as an instance where management violates Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP)inordertobeneficiallyrepresentthefirm’s financial performance.” In this research, the development of the Beneish model (DBM) was done through emphasizing non-accounting variables,including the Information Asymmetry (IS) and Product Market Competition (PMC).

The data was collected for 184 companies listed in the Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) during the past 11 years 2006-2017. The coefficients of models were estimated by trained Artificial Neural Network (ANN) through PSO algorithm. In order to provide the potential of comparability, ten run with 300 iterations in each run were done for both the Beneish model (BM) and (DBM), then were stopped after convergence.

Research results indicate that training error of ANN trained by PSO algorithm measured by mean square error (MSE) was reduced from 0/0807 to 0/0777 by the development of BM. The area under Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) for BM was calculated up to 0/5792, which is located in very low confidence range of 0/5-0/6, indicating failed test result and high prediction error up to 39/74 percent. Consequently the best cut-off point and the best precision for BM were estimated to be 0/5021, 60/26 percent, by the maximum accuracy method, respectively. Furthermore, the results show that the AUC for DBM was increased to 0/6335 through incorporating environmental variables of Product Market Competition (PMC) and information symmetry (IS) to the BM, which is still out of an acceptable range of 0/7–0/8 for a relatively good test, indicating poor test result and high model prediction error up to 32/58 percent. Consequently the best cut-off point and the best precision for DBM were estimated to be 0/5304, 67/42 percent by the intersection point of minimum distance and Youden's index, respectively. Incorporating PMC and IS variables to the original model of Beneish decreased model prediction error from 39/74 to 32/58 percent, which is not statistically significant. Nevertheless, this fact improved the predictive power of the BM slightly insignificant.

The findings indicate that the BM is a random model in Iranian capital market and impotent to detect two groups of earning manipulator and non-earning manipulator companies. Although findings indicate that the DBM is a little bit more powerful than the BM and confirm that the impact of environmental variables of PMC and IS is slightly insignificant, indicating the test outcome is still weak and the DBM is an approximately random model in identifying two groups of earning manipulator and non-earning manipulator companies.