Analyst cash flow forecasts and pricing of accruals

This paper investigates how analyst cash flow forecasts affect investors' valuation of accounting accruals. We find that the strength of the accrual anomaly documented in Sloan (1996) is weaker for firms with analyst cash flow forecasts, after controlling for idiosyncratic risk, transaction costs and firm characteristics associated with the issuance of cash flow forecasts. We further show that this reduction in mispricing of accounting accruals is at least partially attributed to the improved ability of investors to price earnings manipulations imbedded in accruals. We investigate several non-mutually exclusive alternative explanations for this improvement in investors' ability and demonstrate that the increased investor attention and the improved accuracy of analyst earnings forecasts both contribute to the mitigation of the accrual anomaly.     

Financial distress and the accrual anomaly

We find that the accrual anomaly is concentrated in healthy firms and is absent in financially distressed firms. The differential persistence between accruals and cash flows is the main driver of the relationship. Prior studies propose two explanations for the accrual anomaly: (1) accounting distortions of accruals and (2) investment mispricing. Our empirical evidence supports the former and challenges the latter. Our findings also disagree with the idea that the accrual anomaly is distress risk premium in disguise.     

Earnings components and the asymmetric timeliness of earnings: the case of FRS 3 in the UK

We exploit a unique setting to examine how an accounting regulation change affects the asymmetric timeliness of earnings. Financial Reporting Standard No. 3: Reporting Financial Performance (FRS 3) changed the way listed UK companies recognised bad news through ordinary or extraordinary items. FRS 3 tightened the definition of extraordinary items but gave wider discretion in classifying exceptional items. The results were that, after FRS 3, the asymmetric timeliness of earnings before extraordinary items increased and the association of earnings conservatism with discretionary accruals was weaker.     

The Influence of Improvements in Accounting Standards on Earnings Management: The Case of IFRS

This article examines the effect of improvements in the quality of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) on the level of earnings management. In order to achieve this aim, we study the accounting quality of German listed companies through discretionary accruals yielded from 1998 to 2006. We assess the effectiveness of efforts by the International Accounting Standards Board to improve IFRS by using two indices that consider the revision process of the standards, and their mandatory application. Our results indicate that the improvement of accounting standards quality significantly reduces the level of reported negative discretionary accruals of the German listed firms during the period of analysis, once incentive variables are controlled. Further, companies gradually assume the quality of the new standards from the moment they can be voluntarily applied.     

Does news play an important role in the correction process of the accrual anomaly?

We examine whether the financial press plays an important role in the correction of the accruals anomaly. Using 83,016 Wall Street Journal news articles published during 1993–2006, we find that a significant fraction of abnormal returns associated with the accruals trading strategy is concentrated on news days. The clustering of returns on news announcements is consistent with the financial press revealing information valuable for the correction of accruals mispricing. Further, we find that earnings‐related news is more influential in the correction process than non‐earnings‐related news. Collectively, the results suggest that the financial press provides useful information to capital market participants.     

Voluntary disclosure of accruals in earnings press releases and the pricing of accruals

This study investigates firms’ decisions to disclose accruals information in earnings press releases versus to provide it only in 10-Q filings and the impact of this disclosure on the pricing of accruals. I find that firms disclose accruals in their press releases when earnings alone are a weak indication of cash flow performance and that following these disclosures the accruals information is fully impounded into stock prices. The evidence suggests that when investor demand for accruals is likely to exist and firms disclose the information in earnings press releases, the mispricing typically associated with accruals is mitigated.

Do IFRS Reconciliations Convey Information? The Effect of Debt Contracting

We examine whether earnings reconciliation from U.K. generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) to International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) convey information. As a result of debt contracting, mandatory accounting changes are expected to affect the likelihood of violating existing covenants based on rolling GAAP, leading to a redistribution of wealth between shareholders and lenders. Consistent with this prediction, we find significant market reactions to IFRS reconciliation announcements. These market reactions are more pronounced among firms that face a greater likelihood and costs of covenant violation and early announcements. While the association between later announcements and weaker market reactions is consistent with contractual implications of technical changes to earnings, which investors quickly learn to predict, it is inconsistent with IFRS forcing all firms in the sample to reveal firm-specific information through accruals. Thus, by showing that mandatory IFRS also affects debt contracting, we expand on existing IFRS research that focuses on how accounting quality and cost of capital are impacted.     

Discussion of “Investor Sophistication and the Mispricing of Accruals”

Collins et al. (2003, this issue) empirically investigate the relation between accruals mispricing and institutional ownership (IO), a proxy for investor sophistication. Their results show that accruals mispricing and IO are negatively correlated; less IO, more accruals mispricing. The authors attribute this differential in accruals mispricing to institutions' superior ability to price accruals either due to superior analytical ability or due to greater access to private information. While the research question is intriguing, a number of methodological limitations may limit the reliability and generality of the findings. In this paper, I discuss these limitations and offer ways of overcoming them, as well as identify a future research avenue in the area of mispricing.     

Effect of information quality due accounting regulatory changes: Applied case to Mexican real sector

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether changes in accounting standards improve value relevance of financial information on listed companies in Mexico. The research was conducted for the period 2000–2013 using a sample of 141 companies that report to the Mexican stock exchange using the methodology of panel data. Our findings show that changes in local regulations (generally accepted accounting principles) to internationally approved standards (Financial Reporting Standards and International Financial Reporting Standards) increase the value relevance and therefore the quality of information. The study shows that the accounting information with international Financial Reporting Standards is more trustworthy for foreign and national investors.     

Mandatory IFRS adoption and the cost of debt in Italy and UK

This paper analyses the effect of the mandatory adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) within the EU on the cost of corporate debt. In order to avoid the imprecision involved in a large-scale cross-country study, we examine the impact of IFRS in two very clearly different institutional settings, the UK and Italy. The UK is a common-law country characterised by strong enforcement and national generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) which are equivalent to IFRS. Italy is a typical European code-law country, characterised by a weak outside investor protection system, and national GAAP significantly different from the IFRS model. No IFRS effect is observed in the UK, consistent with it having standards which are close to IFRS. During the post-IFRS period, in Italy more weight is placed on the accounting numbers to assess the cost of debt. We also find that accruals quality improves in Italy, thus suggesting that public financial reporting data are enhanced relative to privately held information about borrowers' credit ratings.     

Do accruals exacerbate information asymmetry in the market?

A considerable body of evidence, both archival and experimental, suggests that accounting accruals are heterogeneously interpreted by investors. We examine whether the information asymmetry among investors arising from this heterogeneous interpretation, implied in these empirical results, affects transactions costs in the form of the adverse selection component of the bid-ask spread. We examine this impact both, in a yearly setting and around the first release of quarterly accrual information. The results of the study provide empirical evidence of a positive association between the adverse selection component and accruals in the yearly analysis. Since wider bid-ask spreads are both theoretically and empirically linked to higher stock returns (Brennan & Subrahmanyam, 1996), our results provide a transaction cost basis for understanding one possible factor underlying the linkage between accruals and cost of equity capital, and accruals and information risk pricing as documented in Francis et al. (2005) and Ecker et al. (2006).     

An Analysis of the Theories and Explanations Offered for the Mispricing of Accruals and Accrual Components

Numerous accounting studies claim that investors fail to rationally price accrual‐related information and that investors are functionally fixated. This study documents the importance of performing robustness tests when testing economic or behavioral explanations for apparent accounting‐related security mispricing. We find that performing robustness tests that exclude a small number of firm‐year observations (approximately 200 firm‐year observations or about 1% of the entire sample) reveals an inverted U‐shaped relation between buy‐and‐hold abnormal returns and total accruals. An inverted U‐shaped relation is inconsistent with the functional fixation (earnings fixation) hypothesis. We conduct similar robustness tests for the abnormal accrual anomaly and the net operating assets anomaly proposed by other investigators, and also find an inverted U‐shaped relation between buy‐and‐hold abnormal returns and abnormal accruals and net operating assets. These findings are inconsistent with the explanations put forth by those investigators. Such evidence leads us to conclude that the accrual‐related anomalies are unlikely to be due to investors' inability to process accounting information, as suggested by the functional fixation hypotheses tested.     

Information trading by corporate insiders based on accounting accruals: forecasting economic performance

In this paper, we test whether directors’ (corporate insiders) trading in Australia, based on accounting accruals, provides incremental information in forecasting a firm's economic performance. We determine that directors’ trading on negative accruals in larger firms has greater forecasting content and is associated with 1‐year‐ahead bull market phases. Moreover, arbitrage portfolios set up to mimic insider trading can earn 1‐year‐ahead excess size‐adjusted arbitrage returns of up to 12.2 per cent. Results are consistent with directors hiding their trades in liquid well‐traded firms and in providing incremental information above that supplied by a continuous information regime.     

Asset Disposal as a Method of Real Earnings Management: Evidence from the UK

We examine asset sales as a method of real earnings management around the benchmarks of loss avoidance and last year's earnings. Evidence is reported of asset sales to boost or reduce earnings near the benchmark of last year's earnings. For the zero earnings benchmark our results are moderated by the opening balance of accruals: only firms with high levels of accruals use asset sales to boost earnings to avoid a loss and only firms with low levels of accruals use asset sales as part of a big bath. We suggest that firms with high accrual balances find it difficult to use additional income-increasing accruals but find it more convenient to write off accruals rather than sell assets to artificially reduce earnings. International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) are associated with reduced use of asset sales for gains and especially with reduced asset sales for losses. We ascribe this to IFRS introducing additional judgement and estimation in relation to the valuation of both long-lived and current assets on a recurring basis.     

企业的经营决策影响应计吗?——基于企业生命周期的研究

企业是一个不断演进的实体,而演进的路径和速度决定于内部因素和外部因素,尤其是企业的经营决策,在不同的阶段有明显的差别。现有研究忽略了企业经营决策对于应计行为的重要影响,本文的结果表明,经营决策的变化和经营的结果直接决定了应计的演进,企业生命周期对于应计的决定具有重要作用。与此同时,在中国的上市公司中,处于不同生命周期的企业,其财务和会计特征都呈现出系统的、有规律的变化。本文的研究结果也表明基于现金流组合特征的生命周期代理变量,能够合理区分中国上市公司所处的不同发展阶段,具有简洁、实用、适合于大样本研究的特点。     

慈善组织理事会治理对会计信息质量的权变影响研究

利用2005-2019年中国慈善基金会数据,基于权变理论视角,探讨慈善组织理事会治理对会计信息质量的影响效应。研究发现：理事会规模越大、理事的平均年龄越大、理事中国家工作人员越多、女性理事占比越低,慈善基金会会计信息质量越高;而理事长和秘书长两职合一对慈善基金会会计信息质量不存在显著影响;理事会治理对会计信息质量的影响随着慈善基金会捐赠依赖度和外部审计质量的不同而发生权变,捐赠依赖度越小、外部审计质量越高的慈善基金会,理事会治理对会计信息质量的监督效应越强。     

The Effects of International Financial Reporting Standards on the Accounts and Accounting Quality of Australian Firms: A Retrospective Study

We examine the effect of Australian equivalents to International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) on the accounts and accounting quality of 1,065 listed firms, relying on retrospective reconciliations between Australian Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (AGAAP) and IFRS. We find that IFRS increases total liabilities, decreases equity and more firms have earnings decreases than increases. IFRS earnings and equity are not more value relevant than AGAAP earnings and equity and while adjustments for changes in accounting for provisions and intangibles other than goodwill are value relevant, they weaken associations with market value. Goodwill adjustments improve associations with market value. We also find that the reconciliation note for the earnings adjustments contained no new information.     

Multiple logics and accounting mutations in the Italian National Health Service

Traditional public administration (PA) relied on cash- or commitment-based budgets, while NPM advocated accruals accounting. Currently, Continental Europe is witnessing the re-emergence of the PA logic, but the relevant accounting implications have been insufficiently investigated. We focus on the Italian National Health Service. Our findings suggest that accruals accounting will not be repealed. However, accounting mutations will be introduced to increase consistency with the PA logic and budgetary accounting. Accruals accounting numbers will be interpreted and used accordingly. Great attention will be paid to nation-wide consolidated statements for the control of public finances, while faithful representation of individual organisations will be overshadowed.     

Earnings management and accrual anomaly across market states and business cycles

This paper examines if the conditioning on market states is important to earnings management behaviors and profitability of accrual hedge strategy. This paper discusses four findings. First, accrual profits are consistently positive across both market states and significantly higher in DOWN markets. Second, while earnings management exists in both market states, the management effort is less effective and short-lived in the DOWN state. Third, this paper finds that the accrual effect exists but varies across industries. Finally, this paper examines how business cycles associate with accrual anomaly and show that accruals mispricing cannot be fully captured by macroeconomic model predicted returns.