IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/joares/v57y2019i4p845-888.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Hedge Fund Regulation and Fund Governance: Evidence on the Effects of Mandatory Disclosure Rules

Author

Listed:
  • COLLEEN HONIGSBERG

Abstract

This paper uses three alternating changes in hedge fund regulation to study whether regulation reduces hedge funds’ misreporting, and, if so, why regulation is effective. Relative to public companies, hedge fund regulation is relatively light. Much of the regime is a “comply‐or‐explain” framework that allows funds to forego compliance with governance rules, providing that they disclose their lack of compliance. The results show that regulation reduces misreporting at hedge funds. Further analysis suggests that the disclosure requirements led funds to make changes in their internal governance, such as hiring or switching the fund's auditor, and that these changes induced funds to report their financial performance more accurately.

Suggested Citation

  • Colleen Honigsberg, 2019. "Hedge Fund Regulation and Fund Governance: Evidence on the Effects of Mandatory Disclosure Rules," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(4), pages 845-888, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:joares:v:57:y:2019:i:4:p:845-888
    DOI: 10.1111/1475-679X.12270
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-679X.12270
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/1475-679X.12270?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David Seidl & Paul Sanderson & John Roberts, 2013. "Applying the ‘comply-or-explain’ principle: discursive legitimacy tactics with regard to codes of corporate governance," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 17(3), pages 791-826, August.
    2. Michael Minnis, 2011. "The Value of Financial Statement Verification in Debt Financing: Evidence from Private U.S. Firms," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 49(2), pages 457-506, May.
    3. Stephen G. Dimmock & William C. Gerken, 2016. "Regulatory Oversight and Return Misreporting by Hedge Funds," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 20(2), pages 795-821.
    4. Dimmock, Stephen G. & Gerken, William C., 2012. "Predicting fraud by investment managers," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 105(1), pages 153-173.
    5. Watts, Ross L & Zimmerman, Jerold L, 1983. "Agency Problems, Auditing, and the Theory of the Firm: Some Evidence," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 26(3), pages 613-633, October.
    6. Vikas Agarwal & Vyacheslav Fos & Wei Jiang, 2013. "Inferring Reporting-Related Biases in Hedge Fund Databases from Hedge Fund Equity Holdings," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 59(6), pages 1271-1289, June.
    7. Stephen Brown & William Goetzmann & Bing Liang & Christopher Schwarz, 2008. "Mandatory Disclosure and Operational Risk: Evidence from Hedge Fund Registration," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(6), pages 2785-2815, December.
    8. Luzi Hail & Ahmed Tahoun & Clare Wang, 2018. "Corporate Scandals and Regulation," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 56(2), pages 617-671, May.
    9. Nicolas P. B. Bollen & Veronika K. Pool, 2012. "Suspicious Patterns in Hedge Fund Returns and the Risk of Fraud," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 25(9), pages 2673-2702.
    10. Douglas Cumming & Na Dai, 2010. "Hedge Fund Regulation and Misreported Returns," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 16(5), pages 829-857, November.
    11. Stephen Brown & William Goetzmann & Bing Liang & Christopher Schwarz, 2008. "Estimating Operational Risk for Hedge Funds: The ?-Score," Yale School of Management Working Papers amz2559, Yale School of Management, revised 11 Sep 2009.
    12. Dharmapala, Dhammika & Khanna, Vikramaditya, 2018. "The impact of mandated corporate social responsibility: Evidence from India’s Companies Act of 2013," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 92-104.
    13. Nicolas P.B. Bollen & Veronika K. Pool, 2009. "Do Hedge Fund Managers Misreport Returns? Evidence from the Pooled Distribution," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 64(5), pages 2257-2288, October.
    14. Dirk Akkermans & Hans Van Ees & Niels Hermes & Reggy Hooghiemstra & Gerwin Van der Laan & Theo Postma & Arjen Van Witteloostuijn, 2007. "Corporate Governance in the Netherlands: an overview of the application of the Tabaksblat Code in 2004," Corporate Governance: An International Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(6), pages 1106-1118, November.
    15. Gopal V. Krishnan & Gnanakumar Visvanathan, 2008. "Does the SOX Definition of an Accounting Expert Matter? The Association between Audit Committee Directors' Accounting Expertise and Accounting Conservatism," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 25(3), pages 827-858, September.
    16. Gavin Cassar & Joseph Gerakos, 2011. "Hedge Funds: Pricing Controls and the Smoothing of Self-reported Returns," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(5), pages 1698-1734.
    17. Christensen, Hans B. & Floyd, Eric & Liu, Lisa Yao & Maffett, Mark, 2017. "The real effects of mandated information on social responsibility in financial reports: Evidence from mine-safety records," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(2), pages 284-304.
    18. James S. Linck & Jeffry M. Netter & Tina Yang, 2009. "The Effects and Unintended Consequences of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act on the Supply and Demand for Directors," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(8), pages 3287-3328, August.
    19. Vikas Agarwal & Naveen D. Daniel & Narayan Y. Naik, 2011. "Do Hedge Funds Manage Their Reported Returns?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(10), pages 3281-3320.
    20. Hariom Manchiraju & Shivaram Rajgopal, 2017. "Does Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Create Shareholder Value? Evidence from the Indian Companies Act 2013," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(5), pages 1257-1300, December.
    21. Stephen J. Brown & William N. Goetzmann & James Park, 2001. "Careers and Survival: Competition and Risk in the Hedge Fund and CTA Industry," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(5), pages 1869-1886, October.
    22. Ginger Zhe Jin & Phillip Leslie, 2003. "The Effect of Information on Product Quality: Evidence from Restaurant Hygiene Grade Cards," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(2), pages 409-451.
    23. Bushee, Brian J. & Leuz, Christian, 2005. "Economic consequences of SEC disclosure regulation: evidence from the OTC bulletin board," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(2), pages 233-264, June.
    24. Marcello Bianchi & Angela Ciavarella & Valerio Novembre & Rossella Signoretti, 2011. "Comply or Explain: Investor Protection Through the Italian Corporate Governance Code," Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, Morgan Stanley, vol. 23(1), pages 107-121, January.
    25. Leuz, Christian & Triantis, Alexander & Yue Wang, Tracy, 2008. "Why do firms go dark? Causes and economic consequences of voluntary SEC deregistrations," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(2-3), pages 181-208, August.
    26. Christensen, Hans B. & Hail, Luzi & Leuz, Christian, 2013. "Mandatory IFRS reporting and changes in enforcement," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(2), pages 147-177.
    27. Kostas Karantininis & Jerker Nilsson, 2007. "Vertical Markets and Cooperative Hierarchies," Springer Books, Springer, number 978-1-4020-5543-0, December.
    28. Burgstahler, David & Dichev, Ilia, 1997. "Earnings management to avoid earnings decreases and losses," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 99-126, December.
    29. Christian Leuz & Peter D. Wysocki, 2016. "The Economics of Disclosure and Financial Reporting Regulation: Evidence and Suggestions for Future Research," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 54(2), pages 525-622, May.
    30. George Aragon & Bing Liang & Hyuna Park, 2014. "Onshore and Offshore Hedge Funds: Are They Twins?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(1), pages 74-91, January.
    31. Iain MacNeil & Xiao Li, 2006. "“Comply or Explain”: market discipline and non‐compliance with the Combined Code," Corporate Governance: An International Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 14(5), pages 486-496, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lee, David, 2024. "Hedge Fund Investment Returns and Performance," MPRA Paper 120350, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Subhan Ullah & Sardar Ahmad & Saeed Akbar & Devendra Kodwani & Jane Frecknall‐Hughes, 2021. "Governance disclosure quality and market valuation of firms in UK and Germany," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(4), pages 5031-5055, October.
    3. Joshua van Vuuren & Gary van Vuuren, 2022. "Detecting Investment Fraud Using the Bias Ratio," SAGE Open, , vol. 12(2), pages 21582440221, May.
    4. Christine Cuny & Omri Even‐Tov & Edward M. Watts, 2021. "From Implicit to Explicit: The Impact of Disclosure Requirements on Hidden Transaction Costs," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(1), pages 215-242, March.

    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. Hans B. Christensen & Luzi Hail & Christian Leuz, 2021. "Mandatory CSR and sustainability reporting: economic analysis and literature review," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 26(3), pages 1176-1248, September.
    2. Jorion, Philippe & Schwarz, Christopher, 2014. "Are hedge fund managers systematically misreporting? Or not?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(2), pages 311-327.
    3. Andrew W. Lo & Mila Getmansky & Peter A. Lee, 2015. "Hedge Funds: A Dynamic Industry in Transition," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 7(1), pages 483-577, December.
    4. Brown, Stephen & Goetzmann, William & Liang, Bing & Schwarz, Christopher, 2012. "Trust and delegation," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(2), pages 221-234.
    5. Brown, Stephen & Goetzmann, William & Liang, Bing & Schwarz, Christopher, 2012. "Trust and delegation," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(2), pages 221-234.
    6. Aiken, Adam L. & Clifford, Christopher P. & Ellis, Jesse A., 2015. "Hedge funds and discretionary liquidity restrictions," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(1), pages 197-218.
    7. Lingling Zheng & Xuemin (Sterling) Yan, 2021. "Financial Industry Affiliation and Hedge Fund Performance," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(12), pages 7844-7865, December.
    8. Michael Minnis & Nemit Shroff, 2017. "Why regulate private firm disclosure and auditing?," Accounting and Business Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(5), pages 473-502, July.
    9. Agarwal, Vikas & Lu, Yan & Ray, Sugata, 2021. "Are hedge funds' charitable donations strategic?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    10. Cici, Gjergji & Kempf, Alexander & Pütz, Alexander, 2011. "The valuation of hedge funds' equity positions," CFR Working Papers 10-15 [rev.], University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR).
    11. Christian Leuz & Peter D. Wysocki, 2016. "The Economics of Disclosure and Financial Reporting Regulation: Evidence and Suggestions for Future Research," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 54(2), pages 525-622, May.
    12. Cumming, Douglas & Dai, Na & Johan, Sofia, 2015. "Are hedge funds registered in Delaware different?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 232-246.
    13. Andrew J. Patton & Tarun Ramadorai & Michael Streatfield, 2015. "Change You Can Believe In? Hedge Fund Data Revisions," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 70(3), pages 963-999, June.
    14. Peter Fiechter & Jörg‐Markus Hitz & Nico Lehmann, 2022. "Real Effects of a Widespread CSR Reporting Mandate: Evidence from the European Union's CSR Directive," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(4), pages 1499-1549, September.
    15. Kuzmina, Olga & Kelly, Patrick & Gorovyy, Sergiy, 2020. "Does Secrecy Signal Skill? Characteristics and Performance of Secretive Hedge Funds," CEPR Discussion Papers 14873, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    16. Kausar, Asad & Shroff, Nemit & White, Hal, 2016. "Real effects of the audit choice," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(1), pages 157-181.
    17. Vladimir Atanasov & John J. Merrick & Philipp Schuster, 2023. "Mismarking in Mutual Funds," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(2), pages 1275-1300, February.
    18. Platanakis, Emmanouil & Sakkas, Athanasios & Sutcliffe, Charles, 2019. "Harmful diversification: Evidence from alternative investments," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(1), pages 1-23.
    19. Mullally, Kevin A., 2022. "Outside ownership in the hedge fund industry," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 144(C).
    20. Choi, Jaewon & Kronlund, Mathias & Oh, Ji Yeol Jimmy, 2022. "Sitting bucks: Stale pricing in fixed income funds," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(2), pages 296-317.

    More about this item

    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:bla:joares:v:57:y:2019:i:4:p:845-888. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0021-8456 .

    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.