Purpose: This study aims to understand the impact of market power and competition on earnings management, particularly discretionary accruals, in the Chinese and Taiwanese tourism industries. China and Taiwan differ not only in their political and social systems but also in their economic systems. The research aims to provide managers and investors with stock selection strategy in the decision-making process. Design/methodology/approach: Accounting data consisted of 60 publicly traded travel companies in China and Taiwan from 2000 to 2014. Methodology included correlation matrix for the variables, univariate and multivariate regression and competition analysis. Findings: Based on empirical results, the authors found a significant negative correlation between market power and discretionary accruals and market concentration (or lower market competition) and discretionary accruals in both the Chinese or Taiwanese markets. Although the Chinese travel companies enjoyed higher market power and market concentration, they engaged in less earnings manipulation than their Taiwanese counterparts as a result of the Chinese Government regulation. Research limitations/implications: Based on listed travel companies, generalization of the research results to entire tourism industry is limited. This study compares the travel companies’ practices of smoothing out earnings between China and Taiwan, thus helping managers and investors in making their financing, investment decisions. Originality/value: This research contributes to the earnings management literature by examining a specific industry of tourism. This paper is original in two ways. The authors linked market power and market competition with earnings management simultaneously and then compared the Chinese and Taiwanese tourism industries in manipulating earnings.

This study investigates the impact of political connection and information asymmetry on the investment efficiency of firms in China. This paper employs a panel data regression analysis on a dataset comprising 4307 observations for listed companies from 2008 to 2015. The results indicate that if taken alone, neither political connection nor information asymmetry affects firms’ investment efficiency. However, the interactive effect of both political connection and information asymmetry significantly reduces firms’ investment efficiency. The results of this study help investors understand the forces that lead the Chinese firms to deviate from optimal investment decisions.

Purpose: This paper primarily uses statistical methods to establish financial early‐warning models that make it possible to predict, in advance, the probability of a company experiencing financial distress.Design/methodology/approach: In its empirical analysis, this is the first study that attempts to use financial ratios and non‐financial ratios as variables to analyze business groups, and the present study uses the (K‐S tests), and (M‐U tests) and logit regressions model.Findings: Financial ratio variables remain the primary variables for predicting corporate financial distress. Upon examining the predictor variables for corporate financial distress at one, two, and three years prior to distress, it was found that financial ratio variables were the main ones at one and two years prior to distress, while at three years prior to distress there was one financial ratio variable and two ownership structure variables that showed significant differences. Financial structure, solvency, profitability, and cash flow indicators are the principal financial ratio variables. Ratios of director and supervisor ownership stakes after pledging of shares differed significantly between financially distressed and non‐distressed companies. Establishing independent directors and supervisors can lower the likelihood of financial distress.Research limitations/implications: As the time remaining before occurrence of financial distress grows shorter, test results show that the number of financial ratios with significant differences goes up. But the longer the time that remains before occurrence of financial distress, the more the financial ratios show non‐significant differences. That is why a number of scholars hold that the longer the period under study, the less explanatory power it has.Originality/value: The mean contribution of this paper is that establishing independent directors and supervisors can lower the likelihood of financial distress. The paper is useful to researchers or practitioners who are focused on financial risk management and corporate governance implementation.

The quality reliability and maintenance of a street lighting system are highly related to society, which reflect the administrative performance of a local government. However, the existing published studies seldom discuss the specific civil customer-oriented street lighting system, which is the key factor of both the local administration performance indicators and resident’s satisfaction. This study proposes a management conclusion based on an empirical electronic street lighting system (ESLS) and the 280 resident questionnaire surveys in Taiwan. The implication of the existing perspective on management concept is that electronic governance (e-governance) systems emerging in Eastern Europe are going to meet the needs of local governments in terms of the experience level of townships that practice e-governance in Taiwan. KEYWORDS: • electronic governance • e-governance • quick response • township office management • new public management • NPM