On Sep. 21, 2022, Department of Accounting and Information Management of FBA held a half-day Research Day. Despite its relatively small size, it was a successful international conference.
Professor James Ohlson from Stockholm School of Economics, one of the most world-renowned accounting scholar in our time, was invited to deliver a keynote speech at the beginning. His topic was about what is going wrong in empirical research and what needs to be done. Many empirical researchers focus on the statistical significance but he said three-star t-value is meaningless if the number of observations are very large. More important thing is the magnitude of coefficient and incremental R2. He also mentioned that it is not necessary to make all the robustness tests work. His core message was simple: empirical research should be simple to deliver a clear message to the readers and we should not fool ourselves just for publications.
In the paper presentation sessions, four internal and external researchers presented interesting studies. Dr. Yewon Kim from Seoul National University presented about the effect of IFRS adoption on Korean firms’ discount rate of investment using Investment Euler Equation with GMM. She found that the discount rate that managers of Korean firms use in their investment decisions has decreased after IFRS adoption. Miss Cindy You from City University of Macau presented about the adoption and effectiveness of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) guide in Hong Kong. She reported that the ESG scores and firm values of Hong Kong firms have increased after the introduction of new ESG guide in 2019. From UM FBA AIM, two researchers presented their working papers. Using the archival data and experiment, Professor Jacky Lin studied about the differential effect of broadcasters’ different kind of smiles – Duchenne vs. non-Duchenne smile – and found that the former reduces extrinsic rewards from viewers in live streaming. Professor Duncan Liu presented about the effect of audit committee expertise on securities class action lawsuits and risk-taking. He reported that audit committee members’ accounting and industry expertise mitigate firms’ lawsuit risk through their monitoring and advising managers’ activities, which is incremental to the role of legal counselor.
There were many interesting and helpful questions and comments from the audience of many AIM academic staff. The presenters appreciated these comments and suggestions which would be helpful to improve their papers, and the audience learned a lot from the current topics in accounting and BIDA from the presenters. In short, the first UM FBA AIM Research Day was very successful and we plan to make it regular in the future. Finally, we want to thank Professor Jean Chen who initiated this remarkable event.
