時間：2021年12月14日（周二）   地點：騰訊會議

報告1

時間：8:30-9:30

報告：Big 4 Audit Expertise: Attracting and Developing Human Capital

報告人：王潔璇（新加坡國立大學）

摘要：How do Big 4 firms attract and develop audit expertise? We use de-identified employment and compensation data to compare attrition and cohort-pay profiles in Big 4 and non-Big 4 firms. Big 4 auditors have substantially lower turnover, across the board, than similar-sized peers. Starting pay, cohort raises, and cohort pay dispersion also suffers in non Big 4 relative to Big 4 firms. Auditor fees are consistently related to compensation structure but not auditor size. Big 4 auditors focus on extended personnel evaluation rather than quickly sorting through each cohort, which gives them the most experienced audit teams.

報告人簡介：王潔璇，新加坡國立大學會計學博士研究生（2017至今）， SAP認證顧問師。2017年本科畢業于新加坡國立大學工程學院，獲卓越榮譽工程學位。曾通過全額獎學金項目保送至新加坡國立大學就讀本科。研究方向主要為審計與勞動經濟學的結合。

報告2

時間：9:30-10:30

報告：FinBERT—A Deep Learning Approach to Extracting Textual Information

報告人：王慧（香港科技大學）

摘要：We develop FinBERT, a deep learning algorithm that incorporates the contextual relations between words in the finance domain. First, FinBERT significantly outperforms the Loughran and McDonald (LM) dictionary and other algorithms in sentiment classification, primarily because of its ability to uncover sentiment in sentences that other algorithms mislabel as neutral. Next, other approaches underestimate the textual informativeness of earnings conference calls by at least 32%. Last, textual sentiments summarized by FinBERT can better predict future earnings than the LM dictionary, especially after 2011, consistent with firms’ strategic disclosures reducing the information content of textual sentiments measured with LM dictionary.

報告人簡介：王慧，香港科技大學會計學博士研究生（2017-至今）。研究生畢業于北京大學，獲會計學碩士學位，本科畢業于南京大學，獲會計學學士學位。研究方向為信息披露、文本分析、貸款合約。

報告3

時間：10:30-11:30

報告：Enemy at the Gates: IPOs and Peer Firms’ Voluntary Disclosure

報告人：淩曉旭（香港理工大學）

摘要：We examine the impact of completed initial public offerings (IPOs) on industry peers’ voluntary disclosure. Prior research suggests that IPO issuers obtain improved financing capability and risk tolerance, and are thus able to engage in more aggressive product market competition. The improved competitive position expands the set of actions that IPO firms can potentially take, allowing them to exploit peer firms’ information that they are not able to take advantage of before the IPOs. We predict that peer firms will reduce their information disclosure in response to the greater competitive threat of the IPO firm. Employing a difference-in-differences specification that uses withdrawn IPOs as benchmarks and controls for firm-level time-varying characteristics as well as event-firm and year fixed effects, we find a significant decrease in the likelihood and frequency of public incumbents’ management guidance around IPO completion in their industries. The results are robust to using NASDAQ fluctuation as an instrument for IPO completion. The decrease in peer voluntary disclosure is more pronounced when IPOs are large or successful, when the peers are financially constrained, and when strategic actions of peers and issuers are likely to be substitutes. Additional analyses find a decrease in the flow of industry-level information from public incumbents after IPO completion in their industries. Consequently, peer stock prices become a less useful signal for investment opportunities in public incumbents’ investment decisions post-IPO-completion. Overall, we provide new evidence on the disclosure response of public incumbents to completed IPOs and the resulting changes in the information environment.

報告人簡介：淩曉旭，香港理工大學博士後研究員（2021年8月至今）。博士畢業于香港理工大學會計與金融學院（2017-2021）。研究方向為盈餘公告、高管盈利預測等。