فصلنامه دانش حسابداری
پیاپی 22 (پاییز 1394)

Timeliness of financial reporting is one of the important factors in the quality of firm's financial information, since such are porting can lead to efficient utilization of information for users. Providing more timely information may reduce information asymmetry between acompany and its stockholders. Information asymmetry causes costs of financing from company’s owned sources and from the other sources to be different. This makes financing from the other sources difficult. This study aimed at examining the impacts of financial reporting frequency on information asymmetry and on cost of equity. To measure information asymmetry and cost of equity, the range of bid-ask spread of daily treading, and the ratio of earnings to price were used, respectively. In this study, the data consisted of 71 companies listed in the Tehran Stock Exchange in the period 2006 to 2011, and data analysis and test of hypothesis were carried out by ordinary least squares method.Results showed that there are significant negative relationships between financial reporting frequency, and the variables of information asymmetry and cost of equity. That is, in the years as financial reporting frequency increased, information asymmetry and cost of equity decreased.

Different researches employ different empirical methodsto assess earnings management. One of the methods concentrates on profit distribution that refers to acts to meet or beat certain threshold. Promoting audit quality may cause improvement in quality of information, and in particular, in quality of assessing earnings. This study examined the relationship between the probabilities of meeting or beating certain thresholds of earnings, including loss avoiding, earnings reduction avoiding and negative earnings surprise avoiding, and audit quality, including firm size, tenure, and quality control point. The study used information from 101 companies for the period of 2005 to 2011 to analyze the respected relationship. The results showed that there is a significant negative relationship between probabilities of the earning management to meet or beat past year earnings and the two audit quality variables of audit firm size and quality control point. However, there was not significant relationship betweenthe earning management for loss avoiding and negative earnings surprises avoiding and the audit quality.

This study examines causes of cash holdings of the companies listed in Tehran Stock Exchange, regarding the perspective of tax risks. The relationship between tax risks and cash holdings of the companies can be explained by precautionary motive for cash holdings.The precautionary motive for cash holdings requires that companies that accept higher tax risks have more willingness to hold excess cash. In this study, the sample takes 101 companies listed in the Tehran Stock Exchange in the period 1384 to1391. The results were obtained from a panel data study that was analyzed with in a generalized least squares regression model with fixed effect. The results from 808 observation showed that tax risks have positive and significant effects on the amount of cash holdings of the companies.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of characteristics of board of directors, including structure and process characteristics, on financial slack, regarding a sample of158 companies from Tehran Stock Exchange in the period 2003 to 2011. In this study, the variables of changes in liquidity and financial slack were regarded as dependent variables for financial risks, and the variables of structure and process characteristics of board of directors as independent variables, and the variables of company’s features as control variables affecting financial risks and consist of company size, growth opportunity, profitability, and type of industry. To measure process characteristics of the board, the questionnaire of McNulty et al., (2013) was used.Results indicated that if changes arising from financial crisis are considered measuring financial slack, the effect of board size on financial slack in all companies is significantly positive; the effect of duality state of CEO responsibilities on financial slack in automobile and automotive parts manufacturing industry is significantly negative; and among the process characteristics of board, only the effect of using knowledge and skill on financial slack in all the surveyed companies is significantly negative. Moreover, if changes in liquidity are considered financial slack, the effect of board size in chemical products industry, and the effect of growth in automobile manufacturing industry on financial slack, is significantly negative. Other results showed that the other board characteristics have no effect on financial slack in all the companies in different industries.

In this research, the relationship between the earnings quality, measured by accruals quality and earnings persistence, and the reflection speed of information in stock prices in 112 firms listed in the Tehran Stock Exchange in the period of 2003 to 2012wereinvestigated. Also, the relationship between risk factors of the reflection speed of accounting and non-accounting information and risk premium were examined. To model the relationships, a panel data framework and two stage regression method of Fama- Macbeth (1973) were applied.The results showed that higher accruals quality and more accounting earnings persistence give rise to higher reflection speed of information in stock prices. Also, the results indicated that there exists a significantly positive relationship between the reflection speed of accounting and non-accounting information for risk factors and the risk premium. This means a decrease in the earnings quality causes reduction in the reflection speed of information in share prices and increase in the shareholders claimed return.

Intellectual capital as an intangible asset produced within a company could be regarded as a strategic asset that enables the company to create competitive advantage and superior financial performance. Because of lack of reporting the intellectual capital items in financial statements, there exists asymmetric information about the intellectual capital between company’s management and shareholders. This may raise agency costs. Since raise of corporate governance brings up alleviating agency costs, and then, intellectual capital related conflicts between company’s management and shareholders, in this study the relationship between corporate governance and intellectual capital was examined, regarding structural equation modeling approach in analyzing research data.Data was collected from 68 manufacturing companies listed in the Tehran Stock Exchange in the years 2006 to 2012. The results, after confidence of validation of the findings, showed that there is no significant relationship between corporate governance and intellectual capital.

Working capital management is one of the most important issues for financial managers, and they always try to determine the rational level of working capital to manage their activities. Cash conversion cycle is the indicator used for measuring working capital. When a firm uses its sources rationally to react to unexpected financial situation, sources of working capital may provide competitive ability for the firm. In this study, a sample of 257 companies listed in the Tehran Stock Exchange in a period of11 years from 2002 to 2012 was selected to assess the expected effects of working capital and financial flexibility on competitive ability of the firms. Data analysis was carried out by the generalized momentum method.The results indicated that there exists a positive and significant relationship between current asset turnover period and competitive ability, and that there are negative and significant relationships between the three variables of receivables collection period, payable turnover period, and cash conversion cycle, and the variable of competitive ability. Also, the results showed that there are not significant relationships between the three variables of inventory turnover period, current ratio, and quick ratio, and the variable of competitive ability. The results of this study revealed that working capital management has widely effects on the competitive ability in market and the functional efficiency of the firms, and that working capital ability has positive effects on the competitive ability in products market, but such effects reduce when working capital ability decreases below a certain level.