Helen Roberts

• PhD
• Professor (Associate) at University of Otago

The trickle‐down effect has been proposed as one means to address women's continued underrepresentation in leadership positions globally. While earlier research supported the trickle‐down effect's prediction that increasing women's representation at higher managerial levels will positively impact women's careers at lower managerial levels, recent s...

Purpose This study aims to examine the association between mandatory corporate social responsibility (CSR) regulations (CSR mandate) and social disclosures (SOCDS) in India. It also investigates whether CSR committees mediate the relationship between CSR mandate and SOCDS. Furthermore, this paper explores how business group (BG) affiliation moderat...

This study examines the effect of changes to the 2015 UK charities accounting standards on financial reporting timeliness and audit fees. Utilising 62,785 observations (9351 charities) from 2010 to 2017, we report a significant decrease in financial reporting timeliness following the new accounting standards regime. The decrease is more pronounced...

We investigate the relationship between financial literacy, debt anxiety, risk tolerance, and subsequent resource allocation decisions for cohorts of retirees. Using a survey and the novel comparative method of Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Analysis we prioritise retirement allocation choices of older New Zealanders. Retirees display high financia...

Using a sample of East Asian banks covering the period 1999–2014, this paper analyses the impact of natural disasters on commercial bank performance and how financial integration moderates this relationship. A dynamic GMM model reveals that natural disasters significantly lower deposit ratios but have no contemporaneous relationship with liquidity,...

Purpose This paper aims to synthesize the corporate social responsibility decoupling (CSRD) literature, CSRD's causes and consequences and discuss other organizational attributes examined by CSRD scholars during 2010 and 2020. The authors provide suggestions for a future research agenda in this domain. Design/methodology/approach The authors' syst...

This research aims to investigate the effect of board gender diversity on private firm risk. Using a sample of 27,352 UK private firms from 2005 to 2017, we report a negative association between board gender diversity and firm risk. In particular, we find that risk reduction is associated with women owner directors who may have a stronger incentive...

This paper examines the impact of political connections (i.e. lobbying and political contributions) on the time it takes to detect corporate misconduct and the size of penalties following securities class actions (SCAs), restatements, and accounting and auditing enforcement releases (AAERs). We find firms with political connections exhibit longer m...

Purpose This paper aims to examine the relationship between board gender diversity and private firm performance. Design/methodology/approach The authors test the association between board gender diversity and private firm performance by estimating pooled multivariate regressions using an unbalanced panel data set of 115,253 firm-year observations....

Purpose The purpose of this study is to explore the impact of MFI-level governance on microfinance institutions' (MFIs’) risk in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Design/methodology/approach The study uses data from a sample of 151 MFIs operating in 21 SSA countries during 2005–2014. The Feasible Generalized Least Squares (FGLS) regression model is applie...

A unique dataset is used to uncover one mechanism generating regional and ethnic inequality in Ethiopia. Individual banks’ location decisions depend on the degree of similarity between the ethnic composition of each locality and the ethnic composition of the bank’s board of directors. Using ethnic similarity as an instrument for bank location and c...

This study examines the influence of women’s board representation on the proportion of women senior managers in the United Kingdom (UK) from 1999 to 2019. We take a multi-theoretic approach, drawing on the trickle-down effect, critical mass theory, and agency theory, to explore several aspects of this topic. We find that more women on boards is ass...

This paper documents intraday time-series momentum in Taiwanese exchange-traded funds, as evidenced by the predictive relationship between the last half-hour return and the first three half-hour returns. A market timing trading strategy that uses trading signals from the second (third) half-hour return outperforms the benchmarks, earning a market-a...

This study investigates the effect of financial literacy on debt ownership, debt anxiety and risk tolerance of older individuals. Contrary to prior evidence that financial literacy is not associated with retirement planning in New Zealand our findings suggest that financial literacy is important for retirement preparedness. “Advantage” (high income...

Research examining gender and corporate boards has explored how women's representation impacts firm strategy and policy, particularly around corporate social responsibility (CSR) issues related to communities and other relevant stakeholders, the environment, and diversity and equity initiatives. However, fewer studies have examined how women's repr...

This study investigates the impact of financial integration on recipient country bank default risk and, in particular, if that relationship is moderated by the type of financial integration. Using the system generalized method of moments (GMM), the study finds that financial integration lowers bank default risk in the recipient countries. The impac...

We explore the stock market and option implied volatility response of the oil and gas industry to four policy events associated with the Paris Agreement and the election of Donald Trump. Our results show that the signing of the Paris Agreement had a large negative impact for the Oil and Gas sector (CAAR −8.4%), with Exploration and Production (CAAR...

Purpose This paper aims to investigate the impact of female director affiliations to governing families on corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosures in the context of Bangladeshi firms. Design/methodology/approach This study uses a quantitative empirical research method grounded in Socioemotional Wealth (SEW) theory. Data was sourced from...

This study investigates the relation between the media and CEO dominance. Using CEO pay slice (CPS) as a measure of CEO dominance, we find that negative CEO media exposure, measured by the interaction effects of negative media tone and media coverage given to the CEO of a firm, is associated with a reduction in CEO dominance. Consistent with theore...

We investigate the gender imbalance in the financial advising industry by analysing 32 in-depth qualitative interviews of female and male financial advisers in Australia and New Zealand. Using the framework of organisational structures, advisers’ preferences and stereotypical discrimination, we identify barriers for women and the adaptive strategie...

We examine the association between CEO cash and equity compensation and non-GAAP disclosure practices in a responsive regulatory and opaque compensation reporting environment. Our empirical evidence, based on a sample of public companies in New Zealand, shows that CEO cash compensation is associated with the likelihood and frequency of non-GAAP dis...

This paper explores the impact of credit constraints on household welfare in Ethiopia. We use a three-wave panel dataset for rural and small-town households to estimate the effects of household borrowing constraints on two alternative indicators of household welfare: consumption expenditure and asset ownership. The presence of a constraint is treat...

We explored how academic departments, university teachers and students in one research-led university in New Zealand identified and addressed challenges in achieving three particular graduate attributes. These attributes (global perspective, environmental literacy and those aspect of ethics that involve personal social responsibility) are distincti...

Using Ethiopian firm-level data, we model the effect of different types of financing on firm growth. The form of financing is potentially endogenous to firm growth, and one contribution of this paper is to introduce a new instrumental variable which captures local variation in financial depth. Unlike previous studies of firms in low-income countrie...

This study investigates the impact of housing on financial adequacy of New Zealand retirees using the Survey of Family, Income, and Employment (SoFIE) data for the period 2002–2009. We examine the differential effect of housing liquidation options, rent imputation and asset liquidity on financial adequacy. We report evidence of financial adequacy v...

Purpose Based on the socioemotional wealth (SEW) perspective and agency theory, the purpose of this paper is to examine how the introduction of the 2006 Corporate Governance (CG) Guidelines and family governance affected the level of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting of non-financial companies in Bangladesh. Design/methodology/a...

Using a model based on Bhattacharyya (2007), we predict a positive (negative) relationship between the earnings retention ratio (dividend payout ratio) and managerial compensation. We use tobit regression to analyse data for New Zealand firms' dividend payouts over the period 1997–2015 and find results consistent with Bhattacharyya (2007). These re...

This paper proposes a novel futures market efficiency index which aggregates the efficiencies of futures contracts across their term structure spanning from one month to 12 months. The index measures the ability for price discovery of a long-term futures contract on its nearby short-term contract consistently across its terms. The index uses a rece...

Purpose This paper aims to examine the relation between CEO board membership and firm performance. Design/methodology/approach This paper investigates the relationship between firm performance and CEO board membership, applying two-stage least squares, propensity score matching and correcting for self-selection bias across a unique sample of publi...

Using a sample of 151 MFIs from 21 countries over the 2005–2014 period, we examine the impact of transparency on MFIs’ risk in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). We use a three-stage least squares method to address the issue of reverse causality between transparency and risk. Our results indicate that SSA MFIs have low levels of failure risk and operate in...

Using a sample of 151 MFIs from 21 countries over the 2005–2014 period, we examine the impact of transparency on MFIs’ risk in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). We use a three-stage least squares method to address the issue of reverse causality between transparency and risk. Our results indicate that SSA MFIs have low levels of failure risk and operate in...

Purpose This paper aims to examine the relationship between board independence and firm performance for publicly listed New Zealand (NZ) firms over the period 2004-2016. Design/methodology/approach To address endogeneity concerns, the relationship between firm performance and board independence is modelled using three different approaches: firm fi...

This study examines the relation between changes in non-executive director compensation and changes in CEO compensation. Consistent with norms of reciprocity, we report a positive relationship between changes in director pay and change in CEO pay for those firms where the CEO is also a board member. The results support the view that when a CEO who...

This study analyses the impact of the ownership structure and macro-level factors on Microfinance institutions’ (MFIs) transparency in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Using cross-sectional data from 223 MFIs in 11 countries, we find that MFI transparency in SSA is low and highly variable. Our results indicate that larger MFIs and non-governmental organiz...

This paper uses inventory data from financial accounts to explore whether companies involved in the physical oil market were speculating in the run-up to 2008. Using quarterly inventory data over the period 1990Q4 to 2012Q1 and a sample of 15 of the largest listed oil companies in the world, we derive an Index of Scaled Physical Inventories (ISPI)....

Using a global dataset of 947 MFIs from 56 countries we investigate the factors affecting microfinance institutions' (MFIs) website accessibility. We find that MFI website accessibility is significantly associated with larger MFIs, higher financial leverage, and greater national economic development. We also show that MFIs that have access to cheap...

This paper examines the impact that lobbying has on the time it takes to detect managerial misconduct and on the outcome of the case. Consistent with Yu and Yu (2011), managers of lobbying firms are able to get away with misconduct for longer up to 2004. Further, we show that they are marginally less likely to have to settle a class action up to 20...

Using an error correction model, we document strong evidence of Granger causality in mean from the S&P option market to the sovereign CDS market in 98% of the 56 sovereigns we investigate. Tests under conditional heteroskedasticity provide further evidence of the risk spillover effect from the S&P index option market to the CDS market in mean, vari...

We use an innovative practitioner technique to investigate the interplay between the ex post performance of momentum strategies and transaction costs, rebalancing frequency, turnover constraints, and fund size. We have three interrelated main results: first, the level of and correlation between active returns to price momentum and earnings momentum...

Utilizing a sample of Asian firms from Hong Kong, South Korea, Malaysia and Singapore, this study shows that increasing numbers of female directors on the board have a positive effect on firm performance, as measured by return on equity (ROE). However, the positive effects of gender diversity appear to be diminished in countries with higher female...

This paper re-examines the size of penalties following securities class actions and the impact of lobbying on the time it takes to detect managerial misconduct. Managers of lobbying firms are able to get away with misconduct for longer and are marginally less likely to have to settle a class action up to 2004. From 2005, lobbying no longer impacts...

We explore the nexus between academic performance, ethnicity and student engagement via learning technologies. We do so in the context of an introductory, high volume, finance course at a leading Australasian university. More specifically, we explore three research questions (1) What factors determine student ‘clicker’ based engagement? (2) Does en...

Although much research has been done on financial literacy and the use of credit cards, ours is the first to focus on the mathematics of competing credit card minimum payment regimes. The lack of prior research is surprising because the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency does not specify exactly what form a credit card minimum payment should...

This paper examines the impact of the global risk factor, VIX, sovereign bond yield, and currency exchange rate on sovereign credit default swap (CDS) spreads for fifty-six countries over the period 2001-2010. Using an Error Correction Model we document strong evidence of Granger causality in mean from the VIX to the CDS market in 98% of the countr...

We use practitioner techniques to examine the performance of price momentum (MOM) and earnings momentum (PEAD) equity trading strategies in New Zealand from 1999 to 2011. Much of our analysis is new or innovative. We find that both individual strategies are profitable after transaction costs (bid-ask spreads and price impact). A combined MOM-PEAD s...

Conventional wisdom suggests that CEO membership of the compensation committee is an open invitation to rent extraction by self-serving executives. However, using data from New Zealand – where CEO compensation committee membership was rel- atively common until quite recently – we find that annual pay increments for CEOs with this apparent advantage...

New Zealand listed firms vary greatly in the extent to which they allow direct CEO involvement in the executive pay-setting process, so we examine the extent to which this variation has implications for remuneration structures. CEOs who sit on the compensation committee are paid like plutocrats, obtaining annual pay rewards that have high mean (rela...

New Zealand firms exhibit significant variation in the extent to which they formally involve CEOs in the executive pay-setting process: a considerable number sit on the compensation committee, while others are excluded from the board altogether. Using 1997-2005 data, we find that CEOs who sit on the compensation committee obtain generous annual pay...

Abstract Although CEO membership,of the compensation,committee is extremely rare in the United States, it is relatively common in New Zealand. To investigate whether this results in more opportunistic CEO behaviour, we estimate a standard model of executive compensation using 1997–2005 New Zealand data and compare the results to those previously ob...

From 2007, New Zealand firms must report the cost of granting employee stock options (ESOs). Market-based option pricing models assume that option holders are unconstrained in their portfolio choices and thus are indifferent to the specific risk of any firm. By contrast, ESO holders are frequently required to hold portfolios that are over-exposed t...

From 2007, New Zealand firms must report the cost of granting employee stock options (ESOs). Market-based option pricing models assume that options are continuously tradable and thus that option holders are indifferent to the specific risk of the firm. ESOs, by contrast, cannot be traded and so their cost depends on the risk aversion and under-dive...