Soo-Joon Chae

This study examines the effect of control-ownership wedge (the difference between control rights and cash flow rights) on investment efficiency. Subsequently, the authors analyze how the level of foreign investor monitoring influences the association between control-ownership wedge and investment efficiency. The results of the analyses show that investment efficiency deteriorates as control-ownership wedge increases. This, in turn, suggests that when this wedge increases, agency problems and information asymmetry between controlling and minority shareholders become more severe. The authors also perform an analysis by dividing the samples into four groups based on foreign investor ratio from the least to the greatest. The result shows that control-ownership wedge deteriorates investment efficiency in the group with the least foreign investor ratio. The result reveals that foreign investor monitoring is effective corporate governance mechanism to monitor the controlling shareholders’ investment decisions. We also find that higher control-ownership wedge with over-investment tendency negatively affects firm performance, which implies an inefficient investment behavior. This result suggests that as controlling shareholders’ ownership increases, controlling shareholders becomes more and more reluctant to assume a loss of firm value as a result of reduced investment efficiency. This study provides additional evidence that the greater control-ownership wedge decreases investment efficiency, while recent studies on the relation between control-ownership wedge and investment efficiency suggest mixed evidence. In addition, the results show that foreign investors play an effective monitoring role when controlling shareholders are in position of exercising exclusive power. The results indicate the importance of external investors’ monitoring over investment decisions.

Keywords: control-ownership wedge, foreign ownership, investment efficiency, over-investment, under-investment.
JEL Classification: G32, M41

When companies invest in their internal accounting personnel, investors place greater trust in disclosed earnings information and highly regard a company’s information transparency. This results in prompt investment decisions regarding the company. Consequently, earnings information will be immediately reflected in stock prices, thereby reducing stock price drift. The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of investments in establishing and operating internal accounting systems on investors’ responses to the mitigation of stock price drift. The study focused on firms listed on the Korea Exchange from 2011 to 2018 and constructed a regression model using the cumulative abnormal return following earnings disclosure dates for 30, 60, and 120 days as the dependent variable, with the characteristics of internal accounting personnel as independent variables. The analysis reveals that companies with many internal accounting personnel and position experts, such as accountants, within their internal accounting control systems, experience a significantly lower stock price drift. The coefficients of the interaction terms between internal accounting personnel characteristics and standardized unexpected earnings are positive and significant at the 1% level for all cumulative abnormal return values. The findings of the study indicate that as efficiency is secured, stemming from the scale of personnel managing internal accounting control systems and their expertise, market investors’ understanding and trust of accounting information also increase. Investors, as information users, react promptly to the earnings information disclosed by the company, leading to a decrease in stock price drift.

Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2021S1A5A8070518).

The purpose of this study is to analyze how the expertise of internal accounting control personnel impacts financial statement conservatism. This study analyzed companies listed on the Korean stock market. Listed companies in Korea have been disclosing information on internal accounting personnel since 2012. Using a fixed-effect regression model, an analysis of 3,276 firm-years from 2012 to 2018 shows a positive correlation between the expertise of internal accounting control personnel and financial statement conservatism. The results from Ball and Shivakumar’s (2006) CF, DD, and Jones models are all significant at the 1% level, enhancing the robustness of the study’s findings. The coefficients were 0.872, 0.869, and 0.846, and the t-values were 3.93, 3.95, and 3.83 in each model. This indicates that firms with CPAs (Certified Public Accountant) among their internal accounting control personnel show stronger tendencies toward conservatism compared to those without CPAs. Furthermore, an analysis based on the firm ownership structure reveals a positive correlation between internal accounting control personnel expertise and financial statement conservatism in a non-Chaebol subsample (coefficient = 1.043, t-value = 3.58 in CF model); however, the results in the Chaebol subsample were not significant. This suggests that while having CPAs involved in non-Chaebol firms’ internal control is effective, it is not effective in Chaebol companies that are highly influenced by their owners.