Accounting Department's Lecture

Theme：CSR Disclosure, Analyst Forecasts and Firm Value: Evidence from Financial Restatements

Speaker：Yuan (George) SHAN, the Associate Professor in the Accounting and Finance Discipline of the Business School at The University of Western Australia

Time：2019-05-17 10:00

Address：Room 0407, Mingde Business Building

Language：Chinese & English

ABSTRACT：
This study examines the changes in CSR disclosure and the impacts of CSR disclosure on analyst forecasts and firm value during financial restatements. Our results reveal that restating firms substantively improve their CSR disclosure quality via a change of disclosure tone, report readability, and the sustainability-related word usage following a restatement. We also find that the improvement is stronger in restating firms with low CSR disclosure quality. Further, we find that in the post-restatement period analysts’ forecast revisions are faster for firms with prior CSR reporting, and despite the downward post-restatement revision, analyst forecasts are still optimistically biased for restating firms with CSR disclosure. Moreover, restating firms with CSR disclosure are associated with smaller forecast errors and less dispersion than restating firms that do not engage in CSR reporting. Finally, we report that restating firms with CSR disclosure suffer less value losses from the restatement, consistent with the view that CSR reporting helps to repair reputation damage and protect firm value.

SHORT BIOGRAPHY：
Dr. George Shan is the Associate Professor in the Accounting and Finance Discipline of the Business School at The University of Western Australia. He holds Bachelor of Commerce, Bachelor of Applied Finance, Master of Commerce (Accounting) and completed his PhD in Accounting and Corporate Governance. George is CA (Australia), CPA (Australia) and CMA (Australia). Previously, he has worked at several Australian universities and international universities including University of South Australia, University of Ballarat, the University of Adelaide and University of Rome Tor Vergata. Among them the University of Adelaide and the University of Western Australia are ranked the Best 100 universities in the world and Group of Eight in Australia, where he taught Financial Accounting, Management Accounting, Corporate Accounting, Accounting Concepts & Practices, Corporate Governance & Accountability, Investment Banking & Project Finance, Portfolio & Fund Management, and Financial Risk Analysis. He is a registered principal supervisor for PhD students, and his current research areas and interests include corporate governance and its related topics within accounting and finance (i.e., firm performance, bad debts control, accounting quality, earnings management, tunneling, related-party transactions, audit quality, risk management, and corporate diversification), state-owned enterprises reform, corporate social and environmental reporting, and carbon accounting. He has published over 30 academic journal and conference papers based in recent 5 years, including Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics, Emerging Markets Review, Family Business Review, Corporate Governance: An International Review and Journal of Computer Information Systems. Professor Shan received the title of “High Research Active” since 2010, and was awarded couple best paper prizes, including the Best Paper Award of 6th Annual London Business Research Conference in Imperial College, London, the UK.