فصلنامه پژوهش های حسابداری مالی
سال دوازدهم شماره 3 (پیاپی 45، پاییز 1399)

The main purpose of this research is analyzing the impact of political connections and auditor reputation on agency costs arise from interest conflict. Inverse criterion of asset efficiency is used as an index of agency costs. Also, governmental affiliation in either ownership structure or board structure is considered as a proxy of political connections. Research data consist of 1038 firm-year observations. Target sample includes 173 firms listed in Tehran Securities & Exchange over 6 years period during March 2013 to March 2018. Statistical analysis and research hypotheses investigated through multivariate regression models using panel data with fixed effect and generalized least squares method. According to the results of this research, political connection has meaningful and positive impact on agency costs. But, auditor reputation as one of the audit quality measures has meaningful and negative impact on agency costs. In addition, evidence showed that interaction between political connection and auditor reputation has meaningful and negative impact on agency costs. As a whole, because of the interest conflict between managers and stakeholders and so existence of agency problems, auditors by focusing on the reputation incentives have effective role in reduction the agency costs; but, political connected owners-managers by focusing on the political incentives have effective role in enhancement the agency costs. So, result of this research is useful to determine the effective factors on agency costs.

Companies are always looking for ways to pay lower tax, through tax avoidance. By highlighting the similarities and differences of companies, financial statement comparability increases the users' will be able to identify unusual transactions of companies and reduces managers' willingness to tax avoidance. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of financial statement comparability on tax avoidance and also to examine the moderating role of market competition in this regard. For this purpose, using multiple regression analysis on panel data, the data of 110 companies listed on Tehran Stock Exchange are analyzed during the period 2013- 2018. The results show that the financial statement comparability as a governance mechanism prevents managers' opportunistic behaviors including tax avoidance. The findings also indicate that the negative relationship between comparability and tax avoidance is less severe in firms in highly competitive industries. This result supports the view that competitive pressure can increase managers' incentives for tax avoidance by providing more cash to invest and cope with the competition.

Today, the sentiment of investors from the economic perspective of companies becomes the center of attraction. Since earnings play a significant role in attracting investors' attention, managers are always motivated to manage it. Therefore, the way earnings management’s incentives are affected by investors’ sentiment and the mechanism through which earnings management pattern affects the investors’ sentiment comes as an interesting issue. In this study, the relationship between earnings management patterns with investors’ sentiment is investigated. Investors’ sentiment is measured using factor analysis of the capital market’s performance variables and earnings management measured by  accruals and real earnings management models. The population of this study consists of companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) and the sample is selected by imposing some restrictions on listed companies during the period of 2006 to 2017. The research hypotheses are tested using estimated generalized least squares (EGLS) method. The result shows that there is a negative relationship between accrual based earnings management and investors’ sentiment. In other words, it seems that investors pay more attention to accruals when their sentiment of the market is negative which motivates managers to apply accrual based earnings management.  However, there is a positive relationship between investors’ sentiment and real earnings management. Thus, managers are encouraged to apply real earnings management when the investor’s sentiment is positive; on the other words, investors rely more on the earnings are managed through real activities when their sentiment of the market is positive.

Traditional discretionary accrual models such as modified Jones assumes a linear relationship between sales changes and accruals. Recent studies show that sales changes have an asymmetry effect on accruals; meaning that accruals and its components fall less for sales decreases than they rise for equal sales increases and this leads to an asymmetry. The aim of this research is to investigate the accruals and its components sensitivity on the operating asymmetry caused by sales changes and the effect of conditional conservatism on this relationship. This research is applied in terms of purpose and descriptive-correlation in nature. The research sample includes 180 companies listed on Tehran Stock Exchange that are selected through the systematic elimination method during the years 2008 to 2018. In order to test the hypotheses, panel data multiple regression model is applied. The results show that accrual components are less sensitive to sales decreases than to sales increases. Moreover, we can conclude that total accruals are more sensitive to sales decreases than to sales increases. After controlling for conditional conservatism, the results indicate that this sensitivity seems not to be affected by the conditional conservatism; and accruals and its components asymmetry are arising from the managers’ operating decisions.

The main purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of company complexity on the relationship between management ability and lack of information transparency in listed companies in Tehran Stock Exchange. For this purpose, to measure information opacity, the ranking of three indicators of information uncertainty, information asymmetry and market metrics and availability of information areused.In order to measure management ability, model of Demerjian et al. (2012) is incorporated. The research hypotheses are tested based on a statistical sample consisting of 106 companies during a 9-year period from 2010 to 2018, using a panel data model regression model. The results show that there is a negative and significant relationship between management ability and lack of transparency of company information. Also, the complexity of the company negatively affects the relationship between management ability and lack of information transparency. In general, the results indicate that as management ability increases, information opacity decreases; so that this reduction shows the transparency of the company. However, complexity in the corporate environment affects the ability of managers to process information and reduces information transparency.

Identifying the factors affecting the cost of capital of the company is always one of the important issues for investors and managers. Therefore, in this study, the effect of quality of disclosure of financial information on the cost of capital of the company and also the effect of the CEO’s dual role on this relationship is examined. To calculate the company's capital cost, the Gordon model and the capital asset pricing model are used, and to measure the quality of disclosure, the quality of Kaznik's (1999) accruals and the disclosure index published by the Stock Exchange Organization are used. Also, the duality of the role of the CEO means that the CEO is simultaneously the chairman or vice-chairman of the board. Finally, the results of the test of research hypotheses on 148 companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange in the period 2012 to 2018 by regression method, showed that there are an inverse and significant relationship between the quality of disclosure and the cost of capital of companies. There was also no evidence of the duality of the role of the CEO on the cost of capital and the moderating effect of this variable on the relationship between disclosure quality and capital cost.