Expense Misreporting in Nonprofit Organizations
研究非营利组织是否在公开财务报表中少报筹款费用，发现零筹款费用现象部分源于不当报告，且管理激励与误报行为正相关，而外部会计师的使用和SOP 98-2准则降低了误报概率。
We examine whether nonprofit organizations understate fundraising expenses in their publicly available financial statements. A large body of anecdotal evidence notes that an inexplicable number of nonprofits report zero fundraising expenses. We provide empirical evidence that the zero fundraising expense phenomenon is at least partly due to inappropriate reporting. We then examine to what extent these misreported expenses are the result of managerial incentives. Prior research finds an association between reported expenses and managerial compensation as well as the level of donations received. Using these findings we construct two incentive variables and find a positive association between misreporting behavior and managerial incentives. Our results also suggest that the use of an outside accountant reduces the probability that a nonprofit will misreport expenses, consistent with the use of an outside paid accountant increasing the reliability and usefulness of nonprofit financial reports. Finally, we find that SOP 98-2 reduced the probability that a nonprofit will misreport fundraising expenses.