Estimating the Equity Risk Premium Using Accounting Fundamentals

This study uses recent developments in the theoretical modelling of the links between unrecorded accounting goodwill, accounting profitability and the cost of equity, together with Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) betas, to estimate the ex-ante equity risk premium in the UK. The results suggest that, over our sample period from 1968 to 1995, the premium has been in the region of 5%. Our estimate lends support to the view that the ex-ante equity risk premium is substantially less than the historical average of the excess of equity returns over the risk-free rate, and is similar to the rates applied recently by UK competition regulators.     

Ex Ante Incentives for Earnings Management and the Informativeness of Earnings

This study examines the relation between ex ante incentives of insurance managers to engage in earnings management to meet regulatory standards and the informativeness of earnings. This study extends prior research by simultaneously examining the effects of earnings management and uncertainty about earnings as suggested by Collins and DeAngelo (1990) and Imhoff and Lobo (1992). Results from a sample of 375 quarterly earnings announcements of 41 property and liability insurers during the period 1989 to 1992 support the hypothesis that when managers' incentives for earnings management are high, earnings announcements are less informative to investors (even after controlling for uncertainty associated with exposure to large-scale catastrophes). Robustness tests suggest that our results are not attributable to firm size, time period effects, firm effects, accounting estimation error, or financial distress risk. These results are consistent with investors using publicly available information to predict P-L insurance managers' ex ante incentives to manage earnings to meet regulatory standards, and that they use this information in forming their beliefs about earnings quality.     

Pricing and Mispricing Effects of SFAS 131

Abstract:  We investigate the effects of the introduction of Statement of Financial Accounting Standards No. 131 (SFAS 131) on the market's valuation of foreign earnings. Thomas (1999) documents that investors discount the value of foreign earnings for US multinational companies. He conjectures but does not test the possibility that this finding is due to poor disclosure related to foreign operations. We find strong evidence that the introduction of the standard is positively associated with the pricing of foreign earnings. In addition, we use both the Mishkin (1983) test and a zero-investment hedge portfolio test and find that investors' mispricing of foreign earnings lessens (and in fact disappears) after SFAS 131. This study is one of the first attempts to show that improved disclosure reduces mispricing.     

Informed Trading Around Earnings Announcements: Another Look

This study is an empirical test of the Easley, O'Hara, and Srinivas (1998) multimarket sequential trade model of stock and option markets. We employ two approaches to determine the information content of signed stock and option trades executed around quarterly earnings announcements. The first approach expands the vector autoregression (VAR) technique of Hasbrouck (1991a) to include signed option trade volumes and inter‐trade durations. Estimates from the VAR models provide insight into whether both equity and option trades are viewed as informative by the equity specialist. The second approach focuses on the information content of the earnings releases to determine whether signed equity and option trades executed prior to the announcements are informed. Results indicate that although informed traders prefer to transact in both markets around earnings announcements, option market transactions contain no incremental information.     

US inflation dynamics on long-range data

In this article, we evaluate inflation persistence in the United States using long-range monthly and annual data. The importance of inflation persistence is crucial to policy authorities and market participants, since the level of inflation persistence provides an indication on the susceptibility of the economy to exogenous shocks. Departing from classic econometric approaches found in the relevant literature, we evaluate inflation persistence through the nonparametric Hurst exponent within both a global and a rolling window framework. Moreover, we expand our analysis to detect the potential existence of chaos in the data generating process, in order to enhance the robustness of our conclusions. Overall, we find that inflation persistence is high from 1775 to 2013 for the annual data-set and from February 1876 to May 2014 in monthly frequency, respectively. Especially from the monthly data-set, the rolling window approach allows us to derive that inflation persistence has reached to historically high levels in the post–Bretton Woods period and remained there ever since.     

The expected real return to equity

The expected return to equity – typically measured as a historical average – is a key variable in the decision making of investors. A recent literature uses analysts' forecasts, investor surveys or present-value relationships and finds estimates of expected returns that are sometimes much lower than historical averages. This study extends the present-value approach to a dynamic optimizing framework. Given a model that captures this relationship, one can use data on dividends, earnings and valuations to infer the model-implied expected return. Using this method, the estimated expected real return to equity ranges from 4.9% to 5.6% . Furthermore, the analysis indicates that expected returns have declined by about 3 percentage points over the past 40 years. These results indicate that future returns to equity may be lower than past realized returns.     

EARNINGS INEQUALITY, LABOUR SUPPLY AND SCHOOLING IN HUSBAND–WIFE FAMILIES

This paper describes the association between market work and earnings inequality across families over the life cycle and over calendar time with special attention to the different experiences of college‐educated and high‐school‐educated people. A concise and effective accounting framework is developed that allows for an assessment of the effect of the growing market employment of married women on family earnings inequality. Applying this framework to pseudo‐panel data from successive Current Population Surveys indicates that the increase in wives' employment has diminished the growth in family earnings inequality especially for well‐educated couples. Inferences about the level and change in earnings inequality depend on the degree of labor market attachment of the people studied especially in the case of wives.     

An Empirical Investigation of the True and Fair Override in the United Kingdom

Abstract:  The True and Fair View concept requires companies to depart from GAAP or the law if necessary to present a true and fair view of the corporation's financial affairs. We analyze UK public companies invoking a true and fair override to assess whether overrides are associated with weakened performance, earnings quality and informativeness. We find quantified overrides increase income and equity significantly, and firms that invoke more costly overrides report weaker performance. We also find that firms invoking the most costly overrides have less informative financial statements than control firms, and lower earnings quality. In contrast, firms invoking less costly overrides do not exhibit weaker performance, less informative financial statements or weaker earnings quality. These findings are relevant for the debate on principle- vs. rules-based accounting.     

Employment and wage dynamics in Estonia, 1989-951

This study monitors the effects of economic transition on wages and employment in a former Soviet Republic. Estonia's case is of particular interest because of its early adoption of relatively free labour market policies. Relative wages for the highest educated groups rose for all age groups. There were also rapid increases in returns to job experience, particularly at young ages. Increasing wage dispersion across human capital groups was accompanied by narrowing wage dispersion within human capital groups. Relative wages rose in sectors which gained relative employment, while they fell in shrinking sectors. In addition, there were large flows of labour between shrinking and growing sectors, suggesting that labour market equilibrating mechanisms developed very rapidly in Estonia.