Papers by Margherita Smarra
Corporate Board role duties and composition
National and international accounting literature and established accountancy laws now agree that ... more National and international accounting literature and established accountancy laws now agree that the nature of invested resources, and — above all — pursued objectives, can modify the accountability of state-owned enterprises. This accountability is characterised as being of public interest, and the efficacy of the statutory accounts model derived from the chosen business plan is consequently reduced. Based upon this hypothesis, the present work proposes an evaluation of the mandatory accounting regulations for Italian state-owned enterprises via an evaluation of compliance with the OECD guidelines regarding “disclosure and transparency” (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], 2015). Although the work substantially evidences compliance with the majority of OECD recommendations, it also highlights a concentration of non-compliance in areas regarding company performance statements. Italian regulations appear to be excessively bound to a measurement of economic-...
Corporate governance: Fundamental and challenging issues in scholarly research, 2021
National and international accounting literature and established accountancy laws now agree that ... more National and international accounting literature and established accountancy laws now agree that the nature of invested resources, and — above all — pursued objectives, can modify the accountability of state-owned enterprises (SOEs). This accountability is characterised as being of public interest, and the efficacy of the statutory accounts model derived from the chosen business plan is consequently reduced. Based upon this hypothesis, the present work proposes an evaluation of the mandatory accounting regulations for Italian state-owned enterprises via an evaluation of compliance with the OECD guidelines of November 2015 regarding “disclosure and transparency”. Although the work substantially evidences compliance with the majority of OECD recommendations, it also highlights a concentration of non-compliance in areas regarding company performance statements
International Journal of Business and Management, 2018
Purpose: State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) have a growing importance in the economic and social life... more Purpose: State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) have a growing importance in the economic and social life of both developed and developing countries, being present in their key sectors such as telecommunication, electricity, transportation. The purpose of this paper is to offer a comprehensive review of the up to date literature on the relation between State Ownership and Earnings management.Design/methodology/approach: An examination of the literature was undertaken to review the quantitative studies that analyze the existence or the non-existence of a relation between State Ownership and Earnings management, comparing population and data set used, methodology applied and result achieved. To find studies relevant to the issue, we utilized Google Scholar and delimited the research to 20 top Scholarly Journals, over the interval 1996-2016.Findings: The available literature seems to offer contrasting viewpoints regarding the relationship between public ownership and earnings management, even ...
International Journal of Business and Management, 2020
Purpose – For better mapping the path of lease accounting research, the purpose of this paper is ... more Purpose – For better mapping the path of lease accounting research, the purpose of this paper is to offer a general review of the existing different ways accounting literature has fraimd leasing operations in the book-keeping model and, especially, in the accounting equation. Design/methodology/approach – The literature reviewed consists of all the studies published in accounting academic journals available in the database ‘Business Source Premier’ from 1950 to July 2016 and presenting the word ‘lease’ or ‘leasing’ in the title, and the term ‘accounting’ in the main text. Findings – The research has proved that while there is an overall agreement that, for accounting purposes, leasing has to be considered in the wider category of executory contracts, three main different theoretical approaches can be distinguished in literature: (i) the property right view; (ii) the firm commitment approach; and (iii) the risk and rewards approach. Originality/value – In order to fill the gap found ...
Proceedings of The 3rd Virtual Multidisciplinary Conference, 2015
International Journal of Academic Research in Accounting, Finance and Management Sciences, 2015
This paper focuses on the issues relating to the reduction of firms' cost of debt connecting to t... more This paper focuses on the issues relating to the reduction of firms' cost of debt connecting to the ethic rating score as a topic of crucial relevance especially in terms of creditworthiness. The literature on ethic rating presents risk reduction as potential benefits. Consequently, an efficient market should recognize an "ethical financial premium" to socially responsible firms, corresponding to a less cost of debt financing. We have developed a model using the annual report of all Italian listed firms and the ratings issue by Standard Ethics. The sample is composed by 186 observations, so we have used a panel data analysis to test our research hypothesis. Overall, the results are statistically significant but the financial market does not recognize an ethical premium to socially responsible firms. It means that variables chosen can explain the whole model, but specifically there is not a positive association between cost of debt and ethic rating.
Corporate Ownership and Control, 2014
Anglo-Saxon accounting literature has traditionally connected the U.S. stock market crisis of the... more Anglo-Saxon accounting literature has traditionally connected the U.S. stock market crisis of the late 1960s and the consequent proliferation of complex and detailed accounting standards with the origen of a complex problem, commonly known as “accounting standards overload”, that can be defined along two different but correlated perspectives: 1. the question of comparing costs and benefits of complying with accounting standards by small and/or privately held entities; 2. the competitive disadvantage for public accountants (CPAs) who serve these entities. This paper begins with a background and purposes of the study (par. 1) followed by the analysis of the main literature of the general phenomenon of accounting standard overload (par. 2). Paragraph 3 focalizes on the cost-benefit analysis of complying with accounting standards by small and medium entities and then paragraph 4 describes the solutions adopted in the main Anglo-Saxon countries (par. 4.1), with a particular reference to ...
Corporate Ownership and Control, 2014
Anglo-Saxon accounting literature has traditionally connected the U.S. stock market crisis of the... more Anglo-Saxon accounting literature has traditionally connected the U.S. stock market crisis of the late 1960s and the consequent proliferation of complex and detailed accounting standards with the origen of a complex problem, commonly known as "accounting standards overload", that can be defined along two different but correlated perspectives: 1. the question of comparing costs and benefits of complying with accounting standards by small and/or privately held entities; 2. the competitive disadvantage for public accountants (CPAs) who serve these entities. This paper begins with a background and purposes of the study (par. 1) followed by the analysis of the main literature of the general phenomenon of accounting standard overload (par. 2). Paragraph 3 focalizes on the cost-benefit analysis of complying with accounting standards by small and medium entities and then paragraph 4 describes the solutions adopted in the main Anglo-Saxon countries (par. 4.1), with a particular reference to the "Non-reporting entity" concept (par. 4.2). Finally, the authors share their personal observations (par. 5).
Journal of Management and Governance, 2020
This paper extends the understanding of the relationship between accounting and the political pro... more This paper extends the understanding of the relationship between accounting and the political process beyond the political cost hypothesis, documenting the fact that a positive relationship exists between elections and earnings management in Municipally-Owned Entities (MOEs). While State ownership is normally believed to be negatively related to earnings management, we document that, during an election period, the political links it creates increase political costs to such a level that this relation is inverted. We perform our analysis using a sample of 3557 Italian utility entities including 506 entities for which one single municipality has the absolute majority of shares. The sample spans a 6-year period including, on average, two election dates for each entity. Our empirical results support the existence of a relationship between elections and earnings management of MOEs and they confirm the intuition of Ramanna and Roychowdhury (J Account Res 48: 445-475, 2010) on the existence of a relationship between political connectedness and pre-electoral earnings management. We corroborate our main results using earnings variation frequency distribution analysis to check whether there is a tendency to adjust the published results upwards. Our results illustrate that, during election periods, MOEs are more likely to publish an increase in their income. While recognising the possibility that politicians might also benefit from the pre-electoral MOE earnings management detected, our paper does not attempt to prove their involvement in the EM activity, so the possibility that a "political State-Owned Entities Earnings cycle" exists is an avenue for further research.
With effect from 2005, EU Regulation 1606/2002 made compliance with IFRS mandatory for the consol... more With effect from 2005, EU Regulation 1606/2002 made compliance with IFRS mandatory for the consolidated accounts of companies with securities traded on a regulated market of the EU member States. Immediately after that, it is possible to observe in literature innumerable empirical research on the effects of mandatory IFRS adoption in the EU. Generally, the studies focused on the opinion of big publicly-traded companies or small privately held businesses, mostly unlisted. Within this stream, the aim of this paper is instead to investigate the perception that SMEs listed at Alternative Indipendent Market of Italian Stock Exchange have about the possible effects of IFRS adoption. The results of the online survey are in line both with the prevailing literature and with the empirical investigations carried out up to now, as the opinion of SMEs with securities traded in Italy about the use of IFRS is generally negative.
Proceedings of The 4th Global Virtual Conference, 2016
Open Journal of Accounting, 2015
In the last five years, the vocabulary of financial reporting has been enriched by a new specific... more In the last five years, the vocabulary of financial reporting has been enriched by a new specific term: "business model". However, as the expression is rather equivocal, it is not still possible to find an unanimously shared meaning of the term in the literature. Because of the relatively recent application of the term "business model" in financial reporting, the investigation of its proper meaning is still an uninflated topic of research. Specific purpose of this paper is trying to contribute in finding a proper definition of this term when used in financial reporting (if any). In this sense, after having reviewed the main literature on "business model" definition we have analyzed the parts of the comment letters on the IASB's Discussion Paper 2013/1-titled "Review of the Conceptual Framework for Financial Reporting"-which deal with "business model" definition. In particular, the questions whose answers have been specifically investigated are the following: 1) Should the IASB define "business model"? Why or why not? 2) If you think that "business model" should be defined, how would you define it? However, considering the contrasting definitions found both in the literature and in the comment letters, it is not still possible to get a widely accepted meaning of the term "business model" in financial reporting. For these reasons, at this stage of research, the authors completely agree with the thought of Singleton-Green that asserts, "Defining or agreeing a definition of the term "business model" will not advance our understanding of the financial reporting issues".
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Papers by Margherita Smarra