فصلنامه دانش حسابداری
پیاپی 18 (پاییز 1393)

In the fundamental analysis، it is claimed that an increase in the ratio of selling، general، and administrative costs to sales (SG&A) represents management inefficiency in controlling costs and could be interpreted as negative signal about future profitability. This ignores some important aspects of SG&A cost behavior since both unchanged and sticky costs may cause the ratio of SG&A costs to sales increase. In this case، an increase in the SG&A cost ratio may actually convey positive information about managers’ expectations about future earnings. In this research، the impact of cost behavior on the relationship between future profitability and SG&A ratio was examined، using a sample of 137 firms during 1380 to 1389. The findings show that there is a negative relationship between future earnings and SG&A cost ratio in sales-increasing periods. But، inconsistent with traditional interpretation of SG&A cost changes، future earnings are positively related to changes in the SG&A cost ratio in the periods in which sales decline، and that the higher the SG&A cost ratio، the stronger the positive relationship between future earnings and SG&A cost ratio. Also، it was found that after eliminating the impact of cost behavior، the increase in SG&A cost ratio causes increase in the future earnings in both revenue-increasing and revenue-decreasing periods.

This paper examines the relationship between the degree of competition a firm faces and its corporate governance, given that product market competition acts as an external mechanism for corporate governance. The sample consists of 212 companies listed in the Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) during the period of 1386-1391. A multi-dimensional approach has been taken to measure corporate governance, and two indicators are used to measure product market competition. The result shows that firms in competitive industries or with low market power have weak corporate governance structure. This result is robust after controlling firm-specific variables, and using various competition measures at firm level. The findings suggest that product market competition has a substantial effect on corporate governance, and that product market competition could be regarded as substitute for corporate governance quality. Furthermore, the result reveals that disaggregating the corporate governance measure into more components causes the explanatory power of the models decreasing and the results being insignificant

This study investigates whether and how accounting conservatism impacts on underpricing the Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) in the Tehran Stock Exchange. The market-adjusted abnormal return of firms for the first trading month has been taken as proxy for the underpricing. The regression analysis of 41 companies that went to the public through the IPOs during March، 2004 to February، 2012، presents results that reveal the IPOs underpricing in the Iranian market is inversely related to accounting conservatism. This implies that accounting conservatism، by more verifiability for recognition of gains and losses as well as limiting the opportunistic behavior of managers، reduces information asymmetry of issuers and other stakeholders of IPOs that leads to lowering underpricing IPOs

This research aims to investigate the relationship between disclosure quality of information and agency costs in the Tehran Stock Exchange. This has been followed by taking the conditions required for 98 companies in the years 2003-2012 and testing three secondary hypotheses. To test the hypotheses، a multivariate regression model within a panel data framework has been used. The agency costs are measured by the asset turnover ratio، the ratio of operating expenses to sales، and the interaction between growth opportunities and free cash flow، and the disclosure quality of information is measured by the scores assigned to the companies in the announcement of disclosure quality by the Tehran Securities and Exchange. The results showed that in the Tehran Sock Exchange، disclosure quality of information has no significant effect on agency costs

This study investigates the effects of firm size on the relationship between disclosure and cost of capital equity. The purpose of this study is to provide a formal test on the claim that states large firms benefit from disclosure، more than small firms. In this study، we have used a sample of 107 firms listed in the Tehran Stock Exchange in the period 1385 to 1389. Multiple regression analysis is used to test the claim hypothesis. The results showed that firm size moderates the relationship between disclosure and cost of equity. The result revealed a significant negative relationship between disclosure and cost of equity for large firms and a non-significant relationship for small firms.

Because of rising the information asymmetry and agency problems between managers and investors, the role of corporate governance mechanisms has become increasingly important. Because the increase of information asymmetry and agency problems has consequences such as over-investment and under-investment, and by considering this subject that the level of information asymmetry and agency problems are different in corporate life cycle stages. This study aims to investigate the relationship between corporate governance mechanisms and investment efficiency in the firm's life cycle stages. This study is applied and its research method is correlation and post facto. By deletion sampling method and considering criteria for samples, finally 100 firms were selected as samples of research for the period 2006-2011. We measure corporate governance with mechanisms such as, board independence, institutional shareholders, ownership concentration and managerial ownership. Also, we used Richardson (2006) model for measuring investment efficiency. Firms divided based on park and Chen (2000) model into the growth, maturity and decline stages. The results show that there is a significant positive relationship between the corporate governance mechanisms and investment efficiency in growth, maturity and decline cycle stages. Also, the findings of paternoster statistical tests showed that there is a significant difference between board independence, institutional shareholders and managerial ownership in life cycle stages

Ethical decision making cannot be done in isolation, and some conditional factors such as field of the work, organizational culture and job characteristics have influences on it. The ambitious decisions lead to misleading of financial reporting role. This study investigates the effects of ethical leadership, internal audit function and moral intensity on financial reporting decisions. This study is a descriptive survey research. The statistical society of the study is divided into two groups: the accountants of the firms listed in the Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) and the accountants of the other firms selected form Shiraz Industrial Township. Data analysis is done utilizing ANCOVA, Vari-max and Sobel test. The findings show that ethical leadership and internal audit function interact and influence on doing non-ethical practice, jointly. The results also indicate that in comparison to the other situations, in the situation of weak ethical leadership and strong internal audit function, the probability of doing non-ethical practice is less. Moral intensity has a moderating effect on the relationship, too. Moral intensity has an interaction with ethical leadership and internal audit function, preventing a non-ethical practice of accountants.