Using Economic Links between Firms to Detect Accounting Fraud
研究利用供应商与客户之间的经济联系，通过客户会计信息中的两个变量（供应商销售增长与客户购买增长差异、客户超额购买）来预测供应商的收入欺诈，并验证其能提高现有欺诈预测模型的准确性。
ABSTRACT We explore whether accounting fraud can be detected using the information of firms economically linked to a focal firm. Specifically, we examine whether customer information disclosed by a supplier firm, combined with customers’ accounting information, helps to detect the supplier’s revenue fraud. We first confirm the economic link between the supplier and customers by showing a strong positive correlation between the supplier’s sales growth and the growth rate of total customer purchases. We then introduce two variables based on customer accounting information—the discrepancy between supplier sales growth and customer purchase growth and customer excess purchases—and show that they are predictive of supplier revenue fraud. We conduct a battery of cross-sectional tests and generally find results to vary cross-sectionally in a predictable way. Finally, the out-of-sample tests indicate that adding the two variables to Dechow, Ge, Larson, and Sloan (2011) model increases fraud prediction accuracy. JEL Classifications: G14; M40; M41; M42.