IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jaecon/v78y2024i1s0165410124000028.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Rank-and-file accounting employee compensation and financial reporting quality

Author

Listed:
  • Armstrong, Christopher S.
  • Kepler, John D.
  • Larcker, David F.
  • Shi, Shawn X.

Abstract

We use a proprietary database with detailed, employee-specific compensation contract information for rank-and-file corporate accountants who are directly involved in the financial reporting process to assess their influence on their firms' financial reporting quality. Theory predicts that paying above-market wages can both attract employees with more human capital and subsequently encourage better performance. Consistent with audit committees structuring accountants' compensation to mitigate financial misreporting that might otherwise occur, we find that firms with relatively well-paid accountants tend to issue higher-quality financial reports. Moreover, this relationship is more pronounced when firms’ senior executives have stronger contractual incentives to misreport and when the audit committee is more independent from management.

Suggested Citation

  • Armstrong, Christopher S. & Kepler, John D. & Larcker, David F. & Shi, Shawn X., 2024. "Rank-and-file accounting employee compensation and financial reporting quality," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(1).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jaecon:v:78:y:2024:i:1:s0165410124000028
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jacceco.2024.101672
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165410124000028
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jacceco.2024.101672?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.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Managerial incentives for the accounting function; Financial misreporting; Accounting quality; Human capital;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G34 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Mergers; Acquisitions; Restructuring; Corporate Governance
    • J3 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs
    • M12 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration - - - Personnel Management; Executives; Executive Compensation

    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:jaecon:v:78:y:2024:i:1:s0165410124000028. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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/jae .

    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.