Should Intangibles Be Measured: What Are the Economic Trade‐Offs?

We investigate whether a firm's intangible investments should be measured and separated from operating expenses. We find that the information extracted from accounting reports of investments and earnings is different when intangibles are measured and identified separately from operating expenses than when intangibles are left commingled with operating expenses. This difference in the market's information causes a change in the behavior of market prices, inducing changes in the firm's investments and cash flows. Thus, from a real effects perspective, measuring intangibles is not unambiguously desirable. We identify the conditions under which providing information on intangibles may be desirable. This study also shows the inadequacy of statistical associations between accounting numbers and prices as a basis for evaluating the desirability of measuring intangible investments. We show that the measurement of intangibles alters the very distribution of cash flows about which the measurement regime is seeking to provide information.     

The Value Relevance of Accounting Numbers Under International Financial Reporting Standards

We study the market reaction to the mandatory adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in Spain by examining the value relevance of the information contained in the IFRS reconciliation adjustments in relation to the local generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). The two‐staged IFRS disclosure in the transition period is specific to Spain: the aggregated numbers of accounting differences are disclosed in stage 1, and the IFRS individual adjustments on book value of equity and earnings are disclosed in stage 2. This unique reporting timeline provides an opportunity for the market both to assess the impact of those new accounting policies adopted by firms and to assess differences when compared to the previous GAAP. We find no evidence of increased value relevance after IFRS adoption. However, our results from the incremental value relevance test show that investors consider the individual reconciliation adjustments in the second stage to be valuable and significant, specifically in relation to marked‐to‐market adjustment to financial instruments, adjustments to intangibles, provisions and impairment adjustments to property, plant and equipment, adjustments to inventories, and adjustments to pension benefits. Moreover, the results are significantly higher for low leverage firms. Our findings indicate that the market prices the informativeness of the reconciliation adjustments once the transition to IFRS disclosure cycle is complete.     

How to improve IFRS for intangible assets? A milestone approach

This study focuses on the decreasing relevance of financial information associated with current financial reporting standards for intangible assets. We summarize and compare three approaches to improving financial reporting standards for internally generated intangibles—the recognition approach, the fair value approach and the disclosure approach, among which we focus on the recognition approach. We investigate the impact of current International Accounting Standard 38 on the R&D capitalization policies of the high-tech industry, particularly among medical device firms in China. We conclude that the current recognition criteria are so stringent that they disincentivize firms from capitalizing their R&D investments. A large variation exists in capitalization timing within the medical device industry. Accordingly, we propose the milestone approach to revising financial reporting standards for intangible assets. We suggest that determining the capitalization criteria for intangibles based on the R&D cycle and capitalization timing should be moved forward.     

Capital markets research in accounting

I review empirical research on the relation between capital markets and financial statements. The principal sources of demand for capital markets research in accounting are fundamental analysis and valuation, tests of market efficiency, and the role of accounting numbers in contracts and the political process. The capital markets research topics of current interest to researchers include tests of market efficiency with respect to accounting information, fundamental analysis, and value relevance of financial reporting. Evidence from research on these topics is likely to be helpful in capital market investment decisions, accounting standard setting, and corporate financial disclosure decisions.     

Accounting, Intangible Assets, Stock Market Activity, and Measurement and Disclosure Policy—Views From the U.K.

This paper considers the impact of U.K. practices with respect to the measurement and disclosure of intangible assets, focusing on R&D activities. We first update prior U.K. work relating R&D activities to market prices. Second, given the clearly identified role of disclosure outside of the financial statements in helping market participants value R&D expenditures, we consider whether market forces are generally sufficient to ensure adequate disclosures with respect to intangibles by considering the cases of two biotechnology firms involved in the issuance of misleading disclosures. Within this context, we consider how disclosure regulation and enforcement mechanisms have evolved in recent years, and how this evolution has likely been affected by our 'scandal' cases. Our conclusions are that the case of the U.K. does not give rise to any wide-scale concerns about the economic ill-effects caused by the current state of recognition and disclosure with respect to expenditures on intangibles. Further, market forces are unlikely to be sufficient in ensuring honest and timely disclosures with respect to intangibles, but the combination of official regulation and voluntary self-regulation appears to have stemmed the tide of any such disclosure scandals in the U.K.     

The response of Australian firms to AASB 138 disallowing the recognition of internally generated identifiable intangibles

This paper responds to a call by the Australian Accounting Standards Board to investigate how Australian firms responded to a perceived loss of information pursuant to AASB 138 (IAS38) which mandated the de-recognition of previously recognised internally generated identifiable intangibles, from its effective date of 1 January 2005. We find that the sample firms did not choose to provide alternative or substitute disclosure elsewhere in their annual report or financial statements anytime during our sample period (2005–2010). Prima facie, this is surprising given prior evidence from the value relevance literature that disclosures relevant to the value of internally generated intangibles are correlated with firm value and presumably informative for investors. However, we caution against the drawing of simple conclusions that this finding implies alternative disclosure may not be valuable. Rather, it is important to understand the forces or frictions that contribute to this result. Schipper (The Accounting Review, 82, 2007, 301) and Skinner (Accounting and Business Research, 38, 2008, 191) offer valuable insights into the potential issues such as the costs of alternative disclosure including proprietary costs of disclosing competitive information and, the lower credibility of financial disclosures outside of audited financial statements. These are important considerations in the on-going standard-setting debate on recognition versus disclosure of value relevant information on intangible assets.     

Why do firms disclose and not disclose structural intangibles?

This study conducts 22 interviews with the directors of 11 firms chosen from the top 30 listed firms by market capital on the Colombo Stock Exchange, with each firm representing an industry. The interviews explore senior executives' views about disclosing the structural intangibles in annual reports to attract financial investments. The study identifies 20 intangible resources in 10 intangible classes. It analyzes the interview data using latent thematic analysis and explores them as responses to social, political, and economic interest groups. Corroborating interview data with annual report data, this study identifies five broad reasons for disclosure and non-disclosure. Build empathy, show they are good corporate citizens, win government support, and build confidence are about disclosure, and divert attention from issues at hand is about non-disclosure. This study finds that disclosure results in managing legitimacy of the social and political interest groups, and also in managing impressions of the economic interest group. Non-disclosure results in managing impressions of the social and political interest groups. The findings contribute to building an evidence-led theoretical connection to understand the structural intangibles disclosed and not disclosed to attract financial investment to firms.     

系统性风险转移、金融危机与公允价值披露

金融创新过程中系统性风险的转移突破了证券投资中收益与风险的传统对应关系,使衍生工具成为一种能有效规避系统性风险的投资载体。公允价值按市值计价的会计处理方法存在着一定的不足,即反映收益的同时忽视了对风险的应有监督;而同时披露收益的相关性和风险的相关性这两方面的信息是提升公允价值信息决策有用性的重要一环。这就需要从披露的视角研究公允价值的具体应用,探讨公允价值披露的改进。     

Crisis-related shifts in the market valuation of banking activities

We examine changes in banks’ market-to-book ratios over the last decade, focusing on the dramatic and persistent declines witnessed during the financial crisis. The extent of the decline and its persistence cannot be explained by the delayed recognition of losses on existing financial instruments. Rather, it is declines in the values of intangibles – including customer relationships and other intangibles related to business opportunities – along with unrecognized contingent obligations that account for most of the persistent decline in market-to-book ratios. These shifts reflect a combination of changed economic circumstances (e.g., low interest rates reduce the value of core deposits; meager growth opportunities reduce the value of customer relationships) and changed regulatory policies. Together, these changes in the business environment since the financial crisis have led investors to associate little value with intangibles. For example, changing market perceptions of the consequences of leverage have affected the way investors value banks; prior to the crisis, higher leverage, ceteris paribus, was associated with greater value (reflecting the high relative cost of equity finance), but during and after the crisis, as default risk and regulatory concerns came to the fore, lower leverage was associated with greater value. Reflecting the rising importance of regulatory risks (e.g., the uncertain consequences of the Volcker Rule), after controlling for other influences, dividend payments (a signal of management and regulatory perceptions of the persistence of financial strength) matter for market prices much more after the crisis, while increases in recurring fee income matter less.     

金融风险的信息质量特征与我国金融会计制度改革

本文着眼于巴塞尔新资本协议第三次征求意见稿提出的金融风险监管和信息披露框架,以我国金融会计制度的国际化协调为切入点,分析了信用风险、市场风险和操作风险等金融风险的构成要素,指出现有监管信息系统和会计体系存在的问题.同时,本文还评价了我国新<金融企业会计制度>等规范对金融风险的披露和监管特征,分析了新制度对银行类上市公司所产生的影响,并提出了建立以风险计量会计披露为核心的监管体系的构想.本文最后对协同新巴塞尔协议的监管原则,建立完整的银行业信息披露框架,形成动态信息披露机制提出了一些建议.     

Keynesian Beauty Contest, Accounting Disclosure, and Market Efficiency

This paper examines the market efficiency consequences of accounting disclosure in the context of stock markets as a Keynesian beauty contest, an influential metaphor originally proposed by Keynes [1936] and recently formalized by Allen, Morris, and Shin [2006]. In such markets, public information plays an additional commonality role, biasing stock prices away from the consensus fundamental value toward public information. Despite this bias, I demonstrate that provisions of public information always drive stock prices closer to the fundamental value. Hence, as a main source of public information, accounting disclosure enhances market efficiency, and transparency should not be compromised on grounds of the Keynesian-beauty-contest effect.     

Changes in the value relevance of accounting information over time: Evidence from the emerging market of China

We investigate the changes in the value relevance of accounting information among Chinese firms over the past two decades, during which accounting reforms are launched to provide decision makers with increased disclosure and higher quality financial information. We also investigate the factors that differentiate firms showing significant value relevance improvement from firms showing little improvement. We find increases in the value relevance of some financial variables and decreases in others, which suggests that accounting numbers help to explain the pricing process of stock shares although at different levels. In addition, we find that value relevance improvements are more pronounced for smaller firms, firms with lower growth rates, and those with greater asset tangibility. We also document that value relevance improvements are generally lower in an exuberant stock market. These results have implications for a variety of information users and policy makers in emerging countries which are reforming their accounting systems.     

信息税及其对证券市场会计信息披露问题的治理

随着我国证券市场的发展,证券市场的法定信息披露、信息披露监管、会计准则建设等信息的公共服务越来越重要,而证券市场现行较为单一的证券交易税收制度作为公共服务开支的来源很难保证这些公共服务的有效提供。开征信息税所产生的收入、支出和调节等作用会产生一定的政策效应,如提高证券市场信息披露利益相关者对虚假信息披露问题进行治理参与的积极性,提高信息披露监管、信息披露规则建设和合法信息权利保障工作的财力支持,从而有利于证券市场信息披露质量、信息监管质量的提高,有利于证券市场有效性的提高和信息披露利益相关者合法权益的维护。     

Sharpening the intangibles edge

Intangible assets--patents and know-how, brands, a skilled workforce, strong customer relationships, software, unique processes and organizational designs, and the like--generate most of a company's growth and shareholder value. Yet extensive research indicates that investors systematically misprice the shares of intangibles-intensive enterprises. Clearly, overpricing wastes capital. But underpricing raises the cost of capital, hamstringing executives in their efforts to take advantage of further growth opportunities. How do you break this vicious cycle? By generating better information about your investments in intangibles, and by disclosing at least some of that data to the capital markets. Getting at that information is easier said than done, however. There are no markets generating visible prices for intellectual capital, brands, or human capital to assist investors in correctly valuing intangibles-intensive companies. And current accounting practices lump funds spent on intangibles with general expenses, so that investors and executives don't even know how much is being invested in them, let alone what a return on those investments might be. At the very least, companies should break out the amounts spent on intangibles and disclose them to the markets. More fundamentally, executives should start thinking of intangibles not as costs but as assets, so that they are recognized as investments whose returns are identified and monitored. The proposals laid down in this article are only a beginning, the author stresses. Corporations and accounting bodies should make systematic efforts to develop information that can reliably reflect the unique attributes of intangible assets. The current serious misallocations of resources should be incentive enough for businesses to join--and even lead--such developments.     

Accounting for Intangible Investments

The traditional categorisation of expenditures evident in many firms' charts of accounts and financial statements does not identify and measure expenditures on intangible investment separately from tangible investment and operating expenditures. This contrasts with the accounting for tangible investment, which separately accounts for all expenditures as assets unless the future benefits are consumed in a single accounting period. Further, in searching for better ways to account for intangibles, regulators and researchers have focused on the accounting choice problem relating to the existence and recognisability of intangible assets. In this paper, we argue that identifying and separately reporting the expenditures on intangible investment is the logical first step in accounting for intangible investments. Learning about the firm's categories of value driving (and sometimes potentially value destroying) expenditures has important implications for understanding aspects of the value chain, performance measurement, valuation, corporate governance and the external audit.     

Does fair value accounting contribute to market price volatility? An experimental approach

This paper contributes to the debate on the impact of accounting measurement rules for financial assets. We examine the association between fair value accounting for financial assets and market price volatility for nonfinancial firms in an experimental setting. One group of participants was provided with financial statements where held‐for‐trading securities were reported at fair market value (FVA). Another group received financial statements with investments reported at historical cost (HCA). Controlling for accounting data, we find no systematic difference between FVA and HCA for three different measures of market price volatility, despite higher earnings volatility and marginally heavier trading under FVA.     

上市公司会计信息披露制度的分析

会计信息披露是上市公司财务状况和经营成果的重要反映,是公司运行状况的晴雨表.虽然我国的证券市场在不断地发展,但是还有很多不成熟之处,尤其是在会计信息披露方面还存在很多问题.文章通过对我国上市公司会计信息披露存在的主要问题的原因分析,从制度建设上探讨如何遏制会计信息披露的不良问题,从而进一步规范上市公司会计信息披露制度.     

ACCOUNTING FOR INVESTMENTS IN UNINCORPORATED JOINT VENTURES

A consideration of the pertinent legal and commercial features of unincorporated joint ventures reveals some accounting and disclosure issues that are not adequately dealt with by existing accounting standards or disclosure rules. In addition, a review of current practice reveals major deficiencies in reporting the financial results of investments in joint ventures. Some deficiencies, especially the disclosure of contingent liabilities, may be in breach of the requirements of the Companies Act, 1961. Our conclusion on accounting methods is that the equity method is to be preferred to the more popular proportionate consolidation method.     

Environmental,Social, and Governance (ESG) disclosure: A literature review

Voluntary nonfinancial Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) disclosure is a rapidly growing and increasingly important topic that has attracted great attention from both academic researchers and capital market participants in recent years. The objective of this survey study is to provide a comprehensive review of the ESG disclosure literature in accounting research with suggestions for the future. Specifically, we organize the literature into four categories: motivations for and consequences associated with ESG information, in addition to disclosure- and user-level characteristics with the potential to affect the observed outcome of information disclosure. We also discuss the key role of nonfinancial rating agencies as a new type of ESG information intermediary in capital markets and suggest opportunities for future research.     

Internal control quality and information asymmetry in the secondary loan market

We examine the association between disclosure of internal control deficiencies (ICDs) and information asymmetry (IA) in the US secondary loan market. We also investigate which types of ICDs intensify or mitigate conditions of information asymmetry in the same market. Relying on loan syndication, loan credit rating, financial debt covenants and loan size, we further explore the effect of loan specific characteristics on the association between ICDs and IA. Consistent with our predictions, we find that while ICDs increase information asymmetry in the secondary loan market, the inimitable characteristics in the secondary loan market (e.g., syndication, loan credit rating, financial covenants, and loan size) help to mitigate such negative consequences of the disclosure of ICDs on the firm’s informational environment. We further find that disclosures of ICDs for firms in regulated industries help to mitigate the negative consequences of ICDs disclosures on IA.