IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/finlet/v62y2024ipas154461232400223x.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Labor unions and financial statement comparability

Author

Listed:
  • Borghesi, Richard
  • Chang, Kiyoung
  • Park, Jong Chool
  • Song, Hakjoon

Abstract

We demonstrate that managers of highly unionized firms make accounting decisions that result in diminished financial statement comparability, thereby enhancing their leverage in collective bargaining. We corroborate using a difference-in-differences approach which leverages the introduction of right-to-work laws as an exogenous shock that weakens labor union bargaining power. We also find that the impact of union power on financial statement comparability is more pronounced for firms having lower accounting complexity, financial flexibility, and employee orientation, and for firms headquartered in states having stronger democratic party orientation.

Suggested Citation

  • Borghesi, Richard & Chang, Kiyoung & Park, Jong Chool & Song, Hakjoon, 2024. "Labor unions and financial statement comparability," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 62(PA).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:finlet:v:62:y:2024:i:pa:s154461232400223x
    DOI: 10.1016/j.frl.2024.105193
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S154461232400223X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.frl.2024.105193?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Chantziaras, Antonios & Dedoulis, Emmanouil & Leventis, Stergios, 2020. "The impact of labor unionization on monitoring costs," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 288-307.
    2. Richard Chung & Bryan Byung-Hee Lee & Woo-Jong Lee & Byungcherl Charlie Sohn, 2016. "Do Managers Withhold Good News from Labor Unions?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(1), pages 46-68, January.
    3. Gus De Franco & S.P. Kothari & Rodrigo S. Verdi, 2011. "The Benefits of Financial Statement Comparability," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 49(4), pages 895-931, September.
    4. DeAngelo, Harry & DeAngelo, Linda, 1991. "Union negotiations and corporate policy *1: A study of labor concessions in the domestic steel industry during the 1980s," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 3-43, November.
    5. Joseph H. Zhang, 2018. "Accounting Comparability, Audit Effort, and Audit Outcomes," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 35(1), pages 245-276, March.
    6. Ciao‐Wei Chen & Daniel W. Collins & Todd D. Kravet & Richard D. Mergenthaler, 2018. "Financial Statement Comparability and the Efficiency of Acquisition Decisions," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 35(1), pages 164-202, March.
    7. Medhat Endrawes & Zhuoan Feng & Meiting Lu & Yaowen Shan, 2020. "Audit committee characteristics and financial statement comparability," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 60(3), pages 2361-2395, September.
    8. Özgür Arslan‐Ayaydin & James Thewissen & Wouter Torsin, 2021. "Disclosure tone management and labor unions," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(1-2), pages 102-147, January.
    9. Yellen, Janet L, 1984. "Efficiency Wage Models of Unemployment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 74(2), pages 200-205, May.
    10. Barry T. Hirsch & David A. MacPherson, 2003. "Union Membership and Coverage Database from the Current Population Survey: Note," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 56(2), pages 349-354, January.
    11. Klasa, Sandy & Maxwell, William F. & Ortiz-Molina, Hernán, 2009. "The strategic use of corporate cash holdings in collective bargaining with labor unions," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(3), pages 421-442, June.
    12. Kim, Jeong-Bon & Li, Leye & Lu, Louise Yi & Yu, Yangxin, 2016. "Financial statement comparability and expected crash risk," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(2), pages 294-312.
    13. Chang, Kiyoung & Kim, Young Sang & Li, Ying & Park, Jong Chool, 2022. "Labor unions and real earnings management," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    14. Gilles Hilary, 2006. "Organized Labor and Information Asymmetry in the Financial Markets," Post-Print hal-00482326, HAL.
    15. Edmans, Alex, 2011. "Does the stock market fully value intangibles? Employee satisfaction and equity prices," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(3), pages 621-640, September.
    16. Jones, Jj, 1991. "Earnings Management During Import Relief Investigations," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(2), pages 193-228.
    17. Francesco Bova, 2013. "Labor Unions and Management’s Incentive to Signal a Negative Outlook," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 30(1), pages 14-41, March.
    18. Bowen, Robert M. & DuCharme, Larry & Shores, D., 1995. "Stakeholders' implicit claims and accounting method choice," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(3), pages 255-295, December.
    19. Jong‐Hag Choi & Sunhwa Choi & Linda A. Myers & David Ziebart, 2019. "Financial Statement Comparability and the Informativeness of Stock Prices About Future Earnings," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 36(1), pages 389-417, March.
    20. Chyz, James A. & Ching Leung, Winnie Siu & Zhen Li, Oliver & Meng Rui, Oliver, 2013. "Labor unions and tax aggressiveness," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(3), pages 675-698.
    21. Francois Brochet & Alan D. Jagolinzer & Edward J. Riedl, 2013. "Mandatory IFRS Adoption and Financial Statement Comparability," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 30(4), pages 1373-1400, December.
    22. Sophia J. W. Hamm & Boochun Jung & Woo‐Jong Lee, 2018. "Labor Unions and Income Smoothing," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 35(3), pages 1201-1228, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kim, Jeong-Bon & Zhang, Eliza Xia & Zhong, Kai, 2021. "Does unionization affect the manager–shareholder conflict? Evidence from firm-specific stock price crash risk," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    2. Chang, Kiyoung & Kim, Young Sang & Li, Ying & Park, Jong Chool, 2022. "Labor unions and real earnings management," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    3. Zhang, Zhuang & Ntim, Collins G. & Zhang, Qingjing & Elmagrhi, Mohamed H., 2020. "Does accounting comparability affect corporate employment decision-making?," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 52(6).
    4. Richard Chung & Bryan Byung-Hee Lee & Woo-Jong Lee & Byungcherl Charlie Sohn, 2016. "Do Managers Withhold Good News from Labor Unions?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(1), pages 46-68, January.
    5. Chantziaras, Antonios & Dedoulis, Emmanouil & Leventis, Stergios, 2020. "The impact of labor unionization on monitoring costs," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 288-307.
    6. Özgür Arslan‐Ayaydin & James Thewissen & Wouter Torsin, 2021. "Disclosure tone management and labor unions," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(1-2), pages 102-147, January.
    7. Liem Thanh Nguyen & Khuong Vinh Nguyen, 2021. "Accounting Comparability and Cash Holdings in Vietnam," IJFS, MDPI, vol. 9(2), pages 1-14, May.
    8. Biswas, Pallab Kumar & Habib, Ahsan & Ranasinghe, Dinithi, 2022. "Firm life cycle and financial statement comparability," Advances in accounting, Elsevier, vol. 58(C).
    9. Keishi Fujiyama & Makoto Kuroki, 2017. "Strategic Management Forecasts and Accounting Choices: A Case of Employee Downsizing in Japan," Discussion Paper Series DP2017-06, Research Institute for Economics & Business Administration, Kobe University, revised Sep 2017.
    10. Chyz, James A. & Eulerich, Marc & Fligge, Benjamin & Romney, Miles A., 2023. "Codetermination and aggressive reporting: Audit committee employee representation, tax aggressiveness, and earnings management," Journal of International Accounting, Auditing and Taxation, Elsevier, vol. 51(C).
    11. Zhichao Zhang & Fangjun Wang, 2023. "Managerial short‐termism and financial statement comparability," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 63(5), pages 5027-5067, December.
    12. Jun Chen & Jamie Y. Tong & Wenming Wang & Feida Zhang, 2019. "The Economic Consequences of Labor Unionization: Evidence from Stock Price Crash Risk," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 157(3), pages 775-796, July.
    13. Afzali, Mansoor, 2023. "Corporate culture and financial statement comparability," Advances in accounting, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    14. Hasan, Mostafa Monzur & Cheung, Adrian (Wai Kong) & Taylor, Grantley, 2020. "Financial statement comparability and bank risk-taking," Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(3).
    15. Ding Ning & Irfan-Ullah & Muhammad Ansar Majeed & Aurang Zeb, 2022. "Board diversity and financial statement comparability: evidence from China," Eurasian Business Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 12(4), pages 743-801, December.
    16. Wang, Yushi & Feng, Yuan & Zhu, Zhangyao & Liu, Jia & Li, Yubin, 2024. "Financial statement comparability and expected default risk," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 95(PA).
    17. Najlaa Kallousa & Youngki Jang & Boochun Jung & Hussein Warsame, 2023. "Labor unions and post‐acquisition integration capability: Evidence from goodwill impairment," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(3-4), pages 764-794, March.
    18. Wil Martens & Prem W. S. Yapa & Maryam Safari, 2020. "The Impact of Financial Statement Comparability on Earnings Management: Evidence from Frontier Markets," IJFS, MDPI, vol. 8(4), pages 1-25, November.
    19. Kim, Junwoo & Kim, Robert & Kim, Sangwan, 2020. "Does financial statement comparability mitigate delayed trading volume before earnings announcements?," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 62-75.
    20. Wang, Fangjun & Zhang, Zhichao & Ho, L.C. Jennifer & Usman, Muhammad, 2023. "CFO gender and financial statement comparability," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Financial statement comparability; Labor unions;

    JEL classification:

    • J52 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining - - - Dispute Resolution: Strikes, Arbitration, and Mediation
    • J53 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining - - - Labor-Management Relations; Industrial Jurisprudence
    • M41 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Accounting - - - Accounting

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:finlet:v:62:y:2024:i:pa:s154461232400223x. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/frl .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.