Time: Nov 14th, 2014 (Friday) 10: 30--12: 00
Location: Room 501, Jiageng 2
Speaker: Jian Zhang, Associate Finance Professor of Southwest University of Finance and Economics
Moderator: Ji Wu, Assistant Professor of Finance, IFAS
Topic: Employee Treatment and Earnings Management
Abstract: This paper examines the association between a firm’s relations with its employees and its likelihood of earnings management. We find that firms treating their employees fairly (as measured by employee treatment index) manage their earnings more. Further analysis shows that cash profit-sharing is the most important component in employee treatment to determine our results. Employee’s monetary incentives help explain this finding. Moreover, our results are more evident in subsamples of firms with lower employee moral sensitivity, firms with stronger free-riding problems among employees, firms in more competitive industry or high-tech industry. Finally, we show that our results are not driven by other labor related factors (i.e., managerial entrenchment, labor wage, employee options, labor union power, and asset tangibility).
