Big data and big data analytics will unavoidably change the role of accountants. This paper considers the impact of big data on accounting and auditing. Financial accountants need to move beyond the book-keeping process and become key information providers to decision-makers. That upturns accountants’ consulting role and their ability to think strategically, providing critical help in management decision making. The relationship between managers and management accountants becomes closer and more effective because of big data. Management accountants can use additional analytical methods to detect processes and product excellence, combined with diminishing cost. Big data and big data analytics in auditing ensure audit quality and fraud detection. Upgraded information systems and automation in business procedures diminish the need for staff participation. Inevitably, the skills of accountants and knowledge must be associated with big data and big data analytics and modern accountants must develop an analytics mindset by being familiar with data and technologies.

The current study focuses on earnings management as a significant determinant of the sticky cost phenomenon, for explaining both firm-level cost behaviour and cross-country differences in cost behaviour. We combine firm-level incentives to manipulate earnings with country-level differences in earnings management practices to provide a richer understanding of the effects of these practices to cost stickiness. Using a sample of G-7 countries (France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Canada, UK and USA) we find that cost stickiness is mitigated in the pervasiveness of earnings management.

Big Data and Data Analytics affect almost all aspects of modern organisations’ decision-making and business strategies. Big Data and Data Analytics create opportunities, challenges, and implications for the external auditing procedure. The purpose of this article is to reveal essential aspects of the impact of Big Data and Data Analytics on external auditing. It seems that Big Data Analytics is a critical tool for organisations, as well as auditors, that contributes to the enhancement of the auditing process. Also, legislative implications must be taken under consideration, since existing standards may need to change. Last, auditors need to develop new skills and competence, and educational organisations need to change their educational programs in order to be able to correspond to new market needs.

This review study attempts to highlight the impact of various non-economic, mainly behavioural and institutional factors on the level of tax evasion specifying the significance of the accounting rules and the contribution of forensic accounting to the detection and the prevention of financial statements. This analysis takes into account tax auditing parameters in order to determine whether and to what extent they affect taxpayer’s behaviour to tax evade or not. Some useful conclusions are drawn regarding the determining factors of tax evasion pay attention to the role of accounting rules to the manipulation of financial statements. The contribution of forensic accounting against tax fraud emerges increasingly. The considerable increase in the cases of financial and tax fraud due to the weaknesses of the statutory audit to detect fraudulent activities impose the need for forensic accountants to deal with financial accounting and tax rules infringements. These conclusions may be essential and useful for tax policymakers to adopt restrictive measures against tax evasion.

This paper aims to explore whether and how specific corporate governance and internal audit determinants affect the profitability of businesses in the countries internationally called P.I.G.S. (Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain, respectively). The sample consists of listed companies of the Southern European countries P.I.G.S. The survey data covers the period 2011-2016. Statistical analysis was based on a panel data regression model. In contrast to many research studies, this paper finds that internal managers are more suitable to perform the duties of the audit committee effectively, that there is a positive effect in profitability by increasing the Board Size with new members and that frequent meetings of the boards entail additional costs that outweigh any benefits. In addition, there is evidence that firms’ profitability may behave differently in countries with similar macroeconomic and cultural characteristics and for specific examined periods.

In the present study, we attempt to investigate the determinants of the effective corporate tax rate of companies of the European Union (EU) discriminating between northern and southern economies. We adopt in our analysis the period after the outbreak of the crisis in the Eurozone up today including some years before 2009 in the assessed period. Our empirical investigation is based on three alternative approaches to effective income tax rate based on accounting information. We investigate the determinants of ECITR assessing two sub-samples of firms from all the aforementioned industrial sectors for 16 member countries of Europe. The first sub-sample consists of firms from 12 member countries of "North" European Union and the second sub-sample consists of firms from 4 member countries of "South" European Union. The analysis covers the period 2004-2016. Estimation results point out that the effective corporate income tax rate is variously affected by firm-specific determining factors for both northern and southern economies. The relation between ECITR and determining factors is ascertained to be less significant (sensitive) during the pre-crisis period in comparison with the respective empirical findings after the outburst of the economic crisis in the European Union. Empirical findings indicate that effective corporate income tax rate is more vulnerable to financial leverage for southern economies in comparison to the northern economies signaling financing structure differences between the two EU-country groups. Finally, there is evidence that there is an indisputable and positive coexistence between business profitability and tax burden.

In the present study, we investigate the determinants of the effective corporate tax rate of some of the European Union (EU) member countries and other non-EU members. Only a few studies have analyzed the EU economies, unlike the case of the USA. In this study, we extend the analysis taking also into consideration some non-EU countries which appear strong economic cooperation with EU countries over time. The present study aims to analyze the period after the outbreak of the crisis in the Eurozone up today. More specifically, the period 2004-2016 is assessed. The empirical estimations are based on two-step generalized method of moments (GMM) transformed in first-differences in order to hand cross-section fixed effects. It seems that the effective corporate income tax rate is variously affected by firm-specific determining factors. More specifically, our empirical results indicate that the effective corporate income tax rate is negatively related to the firm size, capital intensity and return on assets. However, there is no statistically significant influence of financial leverage, inventory intensity, R&D intensity, participation of foreign investors to the equity ownership, participation of government to equity ownership, to the effective corporate income tax rate. Alternative estimation measures, as a robustness check, point out that the empirical findings are generally in agreement with the initial results.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the performance of Greek equity mutual funds and the persistence in annual performance for the period 2008-2017 by using a variety of performance models. Design/methodology/approachUsing all the available funds in operation and daily data, the authors apply single-index (Jensen, 1968) and multi-factor models (Fama and French, 1993; Carhart, 1997) to measure risk-adjusted returns. To assess performance persistence, a series of parametric (Bollen and Busse, 2005) and nonparametric tests (Malkiel, 1995; Brown and Goetzmann, 1995; Kahn and Rudd, 1995) is implemented. FindingsResults show that the Greek equity mutual funds perform, on average, worse than the market index, irrespective of the performance measure applied, and the estimations obtained by the models are similar. Few managers that followed large-cap strategies, pursued stocks with high book-to-market value ratio and eliminated their exposure to the momentum effect were able to add value to their portfolios. Furthermore, a winner-picking strategy based on sustained superior performers is questioned. However, assigning fund returns to the corresponding risk factors results in the partial disappearance of persistence in performance. Originality/valueThe sample period includes the turbulent period, following the introduction of capital controls, which affected capital flows significantly. Moreover, the application of multiple performance measures enables us to investigate performance persistence in a wider spectrum.

Economic growth and social evolution are  connected to trust relationships in a society. The quality of the accounting information, the tax information system and the tax audit mechanism evolve multiple benefits in an economy. Tax evasion, the illegal practice where people and companies do not pay taxes, is a crime because of the negative effect in economy and society. In this paper, we describe a theoretical framework on the characteristics of a fair and efficient tax auditing information system which could be a tool against tax evasion, a tool for an economy to grow, especially in countries that face fluctuations in economic activity. We conclude that a fair and efficient tax auditing information system increases the reliability of tax administration, improves taxpayers’ tax compliance and causes a developmental trajectory for the economy.

The wine making sector is directly intertwined with viniculture, which has been known since ancient times. Nowadays, Greece offers outstanding value for its wines and there are many new varieties that will certainly expand the customer's palate. In order to explore the sector's potential, financial statements and ratio analysis is implemented. In this study, 14 financial ratios are estimated in order to examine the domestic wine sector. This sample consists of 51 domestic wine producing companies. The uniqueness of this analysis is based on the fact that the individual financial reports are edited and properly adjusted in order for a consolidated balance sheet and profit and loss account, representative of the sector, to be constructed. The wine sector's perspective seems conducive to better control regarding primarily operating expenses. The findings could aid producers in the Greek wine industry in providing them valuable considerations and guidelines. The wine market is considered as an enjoyable, collectible, tangible asset that has an exciting future.

Νumerous attempts have been made to explain and classify Bitcoin. The different opinions of eminent economists on the subject have raised a series of questions: What is the public’s notion of the digital currency? Would a general use of a digital currency be acceptable and if so, what kind of use would that be? Does the view of the experts on the subject conform with that of the layman individual? Our goal is to find out if the view of the public coincides with theopinion of the experts on the subject and to determine if is information can be implemented in order to establish a use of Bitcoin in our everyday lives, apart from the specialized use it has to date. During the first stage of this research, methods and rules of analysis such as descriptive statistics and tables and charts were used. Firstly, a questionnaire was used and secondly, the answers were gathered, classified and added up according to the participants’ choices. During the second stage the data was collected with the use of randomsampling, while various techniques, such as simple and multiple regressions were utilized for analyzing the results. The conclusion which has been obtained is that the public perceives Bitcoin differently than the experts do. Individuals believe that Bitcoin is mainly a means of transactions/payments, contrary to the experts’ opinion, which is that it is foremost an investment asset. Additionally, we may perceive a convergence between the view of public and that of the experts on the adoption of Bitcoin technology by existing trading systems.

The recent global financial crisis has triggered questions in the scientific area of capital structure dynamic determination regarding how “quickly” companies tend to adjust their capital structure to their long-term targets, in different macroeconomic states. We broaden the scope of the debate by focusing on SMEs and by discussing the relative importance of firm-specific and macroeconomic variables, when macroeconomic conditions change. Based on a partial adjustment model, we find that short-term and long-term debt ratios follow different patterns regarding their adjustment speeds; the adjustment speed for long-term debt slows down during the crisis, while the respective of the short-term debt is not affected. We also find clear differentiations of the effects and the contribution of the firm-specific and the macroeconomic variables between short-term debt and long-term debt ratios, when macroeconomic states change. We thus conclude that the nature and maturity of borrowing affect the persistence and endurance of the relationship between determinants and borrowing, across different macroeconomic states.

In this paper we propose and test a methodology for constructing a credit rating model. We follow a polytomous ordered probit analysis leading to the specification of statistically significant credit rating intervals. We test our model with accounting data of Greek listed firms over the years 2004–2013, a period which includes both the pre-crisis growth and the crisis phase of the Greek economy and the stock market. Using the empirically—based rating categories that the model generates endogenously, we observe not only a clear and timely response of ratings to the changing economic environment, but we also obtain significant predictive ability over a period of one, two and three years.

We focus in the period of announcement of accounting information for companies listed in an organized market and we re-examine their probability of delisting, voluntarily or not. Adopting the same framework, consideration is given to the assumption that investors utilize market information when accounting data are published. The analysis provided indicates that investors should pay attention to the financial disclosure timing. Our investigation demonstrated that even the short period of three months is quite important to making investment decisions.

The objective of this paper was to explore whether and how the main capital structure determinants of SMEs affected capital structure determination in different ways during the years of economic crisis. We used panel data of 8,052 SMEs operating in Greece during 2009–2012. We found that the effect of capital structure determinants on leverage does not change in an environment of economic crisis; larger SMEs continued to show higher debt ratios, the relationship between profitability and tangibility of assets with leverage continued to be negative, and growth was positively related to leverage.

This study aims to analyse the economic efficiency of Greek small and medium retail enterprises before and after the crisis that started in 2008. Based on the Accounting Equation, we use Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to estimate variable returns of scale efficiency scores and to conclude on specific characteristics that efficient companies have, for example, on capital structure. Our results from the DEA application show a high degree of inefficiency. We found that SMEs on the islands are more efficient than those on the mainland and that SMEs in the cities are the least efficient. Size seems to be important, more so on the islands and on the mainland than in the cities. We conclude that companies should act more conservatively in terms of operating cost when the first signs of a recession appear. In addition, during a recession period, companies that have evidences that their operations will continue positively should strengthen their operations by raising more own capital. Finally, our study clarifies four issues: the efficiency of retail companies in a period of growth and a period of recession, focusing on SMEs that operate in different regions, connecting Accounting Equation and DEA and adding acid ratio as an output in our model.

Public companies were classified according to whether they remain public or they have been delisted voluntarily or not. Proxy variables were separated according to accounting and/or market information and an ordered polytomous logit model was then applied in order to estimate the probability of delisting. Companies with poor liquidity, high leverage, big stock price decline and lack of interest from investors’ point of view (low trading activity) have higher probability to be delisted, voluntarily or not.