Two essays on gift card liabilities

dc.contributor.advisor Zhou, Jian
dc.contributor.author Yeh, Ting-Tsen
dc.contributor.department Business Administration
dc.date.accessioned 2020-11-25T18:22:04Z
dc.date.available 2020-11-25T18:22:04Z
dc.date.issued 2020
dc.description.degree Ph.D.
dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/10125/70346
dc.subject Accounting
dc.subject Breakage Income
dc.subject Earnings Management
dc.subject Financially Constrained Firms
dc.subject Gift Card Liabilities
dc.subject Gift Cards
dc.subject Investment Efficiency
dc.title Two essays on gift card liabilities
dc.type Thesis
dcterms.abstract PART 1. GIFT CARD LIABILITIES AND EARNINGS MANAGEMENT ABSTRACT This study examines whether managers use gift card liabilities to manage earnings through breakage income recognition. Breakage income is recognized when gift card liabilities are written off in managerial discretions. A clear guidance for recognizing the breakage income from gift cards was absent until 2005. Since gift card liabilities are less visible, managers can take advantage of them and use them to achieve earnings targets. I utilize hand-collected data to examine this issue and find that managers use gift card liabilities to manage earnings and to meet or beat earnings targets. The Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009 includes several provisions limiting abuses by gift card issuers. I find that in the year of the implementation of this Act, managers decreased the earnings management relating to gift card liabilities. I also examine whether firms in the later stages of their life cycle are more likely to use gift card liabilities to engage in earnings management, and I find some supporting evidence. This study shows how and why managers use gift card liabilities to manage earnings and contributes significantly to the earnings management literature by documenting that managers use the discretion in accounting rules to achieve earnings targets. PART 2. GIFT CARD LIABILITIES AND INVESTMENT EFFICIENCY ABSTRACT Using manually collected gift card data, I examine whether gift card liabilities can serve as a source of investment funds and influence corporate investment efficiency. Investment efficiency is usually proxied by the residuals from a regression model that predicts normal capital expenditures. I find a significantly negative relationship between gift card liabilities and the magnitude of investment residuals. I also investigate whether the relationship between gift card liabilities and investment efficiency differs between financially constrained and unconstrained firms. The results indicate that financially unconstrained firms are more likely to improve investment efficiency with a higher balance of gift card liabilities than financially constrained firms. Overall, I find that gift card liabilities can provide funds for corporate investment and influence investment efficiency. This study contributes significantly to the investment efficiency literature by providing evidence of an underinvestigated phenomenon – gift card liabilities and investment efficiency.
dcterms.extent 105 pages
dcterms.language en
dcterms.publisher University of Hawai'i at Manoa
dcterms.rights All UHM dissertations and theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission from the copyright owner.
dcterms.type Text
local.identifier.alturi http://dissertations.umi.com/hawii:10739
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