Managerial Academic Experience, External Monitoring, and Financial Reporting Quality
Journal of Business Finance and Accounting, Forthcoming
49 Pages Posted: 10 Jul 2019
There are 2 versions of this paper
Managerial Academic Experience, External Monitoring, and Financial Reporting Quality
Managerial Academic Experience, External Monitoring and Financial Reporting Quality
Date Written: July 2019
Abstract
This study examines the effect of managerial academic experience on firms’ financial reporting quality. Using data from China, we find that firms with top managers possessing academic experience exhibit lower levels of both accrual and real earning management, along with a lower probability of future restatements. This effect is more pronounced for firms with inefficient external monitoring, suggesting that the higher financial reporting quality is mainly explained by the managers’ intrinsic motivation to report truthfully. The results hold when we use firm fixed-effect regressions, instrumental variable two-stage regressions, and propensity score matching (PSM) approach to mitigate the omitted variable and endogeneity concerns. Our study suggests that academic experience can serve as a source of valuable expertise for corporate executives.
Keywords: academic experience; top management team; financial reporting quality; earnings management; expertise; external monitoring; imprinting; intrinsic motivation
JEL Classification: D83; J62; M41; M51
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation