Capital market reactions to earnings announcements: empirical evidence on the difference in the information content of IAS-based earnings and EC-Directives-based earnings

Listing on a foreign stock exchange and the aim to attract international investors usually forces European quoted companies to adapt information supplied in financial statements to different information needs of international investors. Because of the dominance of the American stock market, this adaptation raises especially the question whether Anglo-American-oriented accounting standards (for instance IAS — International Accounting Standards) convey a higher information content for investors than continental-Europe-oriented accounting standards (for instance EC-Directives). The study examines the information content of earnings announcements, i.e. abnormal returns resulting from un-expected earnings, for a sample of Swiss quoted companies which have changed the accounting standard used for presenting Swiss GAAP consolidated financial statements to either EC-Directives or IAS and can therefore contribute to this discussion. The results of the study suggest that IAS-based earnings announce-ments convey a statistically significant higher information content than earnings announcements based on the Swiss GAAP if a variance-approach is used. For investors in the Swiss capital market, the switch from Swiss GAAP to IAS has therefore increased the information content of financial statements. But comparing IAS-based and EC-Directives-based earnings announcements, the results suggest that for investors IAS-based earnings do not possess a statistically significant higher information content than EC-Directives-based earnings. This result has been achieved despite the fact that for Swiss financial analysts financial statements based on IAS convey a significant higher information content than financial statements based on EC-Directives. Avoiding problems in specifying a model for unexpected earnings by standardizing the mean of the abnormal returns of each event window to a positive value does not lead to a different conclusion if the variance approach is used.     

The information content of earnings and turnover announcements in France

Annual net income is seen by shareholders as the most important figure, since it is, for individual accounts, the basis of appropriation of profit by the shareholders' general meeting. However, firms publish interim figures at a higher frequency to allow investors to react quickly to frequently updated information that gives them a more accurate view of the evolution of the firm. In the United States, according to regulation S-X, the interim quarterly reports must disclose the net income. In France, firms must publish their quarterly turnovers and their half-year income statements in addition to their annual accounts. Whereas American publications are practically homogeneous in nature in terms of earnings disclosure, the information content of French quarterly reports differs from that of the half-year and annual accounts. Such French irregularities in information content mean that interim and annual announcements do not have the same value for the shareholders. Because of the heterogeneous nature and the time frame of the disclosed information, one may wonder if French market reactions to the announcements of interim publications exhibit significantly different characteristics from those observed for quarterly releases in other countries. This can only be appreciated through a differential analysis of French market response to interim and annual announcements.     

Market response to FDA announcements

This study investigates announcement effects at four points in the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) review process and explores conditions that may impact final approval. We show that investors adjust expectations through the approval process, and most uncertainty is resolved by final approval. While smaller firms reap benefit from the approval, the market penalizes first movers. We do not find additional gain for pioneering research, implying that these firms may be able to reduce R&D spending.     

Earnings expectations and the relative information content of dividend and earnings announcements

Recent studies of financial analysis' earnings forecast revisions following dividend announcements suggest that dividends convey information regarding a firm's future prospects. In this study, we extend the analysis by explicitly controlling for earnings information released during the forecast revision measurement period. Our results suggest that earnings forecast revisions previously attributed to dividend announcements are driven primarily by earnings surprise. At best, dividends appear to serve a corroborative role. The authors gratefully acknowledge the contribution of I/B/E/S Inc. for providing earnings per share forecast data, available through the Institutional Brokers Estimate System.     

Share price reactions to advertising announcements and broadcast of media events

Over the last two decades, marketers have gravitated toward placing their ads in specific television programs such as the Super Bowl, Academy Awards, and the last episodes of sitcoms. While anecdotal evidence of positive outcomes in the form of increased sales, phone inquiries, and hits on the web sites of advertisers, there has not been any credible measurement of investor returns in this expensive strategy. We find that firms advertising for the first time, with greater advertising expenditures relative to sales, and with more effective/creative campaigns fare better in terms of the market reaction to their campaigns. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Options and earnings announcements: an empirical study for the European Options Exchange

In this paper we give an introduction in option pricing theory and explicitly specify the Black-Scholes model. Although market participants use this and similar models to price options, they violate one of the fundamental assumptions of the model. They do not set a constant value for the volatility of the underlying asset over time, but change the volatility even during a day. By means of event study methodology we investigate the volatility of the underlying asset and the volatility implicit in option prices around earnings announcements by firms. We find that the volatility in option prices increases before the announcement date and drops sharply afterwards. The volatility of the underlying stocks is higher only at the announcement dates and we do not observe a higher volatility around these dates. Hence, the constant volatility of the underlying asset, which is one of the assumptions in the Black-Scholes model, does not hold. However, the market seems to correctly anticipate the change in volatility, by correcting option prices.     

The impact of disclosure on the market response to reported earnings

There is a wealth of evidence of a certain delay in the market's adjustment to published earnings information. However, there is a shortage of studies focusing on whether this behaviour can be explained at least partially by the level and quality of disclosures released together with earnings. This paper explores whether the degree of disclosure is related to the market reaction, and in particular whether the quantity and quality of disclosure affects the adjustment of security prices to interim earnings announcements. Evidence on the pricing of disclosures is also presented. The data comprises interim reports submitted to the Helsinki Exchanges in the period 1985–93. Interim reports are used because they relate to a specific event conveying new and previously unpublished material to the market, in contrast to annual reports which primarily document the history of the previous year. It is found that both disclosure and earnings are important in explaining drift, and our results indicate that the drift is associated with disclosure. These results augment the non-US market evidence of this drift.     

Potential targets: An analysis of stock price reactions to acquisition program announcements

Stockholders of potential targets experience a statistically significant wealth gain of 0.59% over the 3-day window surrounding the acquisition program announcement. Potential targets are defined as those firms that subsequently receive bids. Using alternative definitions, such as a portfolio of all firms in the industry of the target or firms within the target industry with a higher probability of receiving a bid as predicted by a maximum likelihood logit model, yield qualitatively similar results. These findings suggest that events, such as program announcements, release significant merger related information well before a target is formally approached with implications for wealth effects at subsequent bids. As with normal targets, the likelihood of receiving a bid for targets that are part of a broad-based program of acquisitions increases in the level of agency problems, managerial inefficiency and in the proportion of tangible assets in the target.

Short sale constraints,dispersion of opinion,and stock overvaluation: Evidence from earnings announcements in China

Using a clean setting in China, we test the Miller (1977) hypothesis that stocks are overvalued in the presence of short sale constraints and dispersion of opinion as an extension of Berkman et al. (2009). We find that stocks with short sale constraints have significantly negative abnormal returns during earnings announcement periods, especially when investors have diverse opinions. These results are robust to alternative measures of abnormal returns and endogeneity concern. The findings help to explain the impact of short sale constraints on pricing efficiency and have important policy implications for relaxing restrictions on short selling and improving regular information disclosure in emerging markets.     

Stock price reactions to stock dividend announcements: A case from a sluggish economic period

The 2007 financial crisis and the Great Recession that followed resulted in a loss of confidence among investors, and regaining their full trust and confidence has been a challenge for companies. Although economic growth has been volatile throughout the postwar World War II period, recent growth (2008–2015) has been remarkably weaker than in the previous low-growth period (1974–1995). The 2006–2015 period is often characterized by sluggish economic growth. This study investigates stock price reactions to stock dividend announcements, 30 days before and after the announcement dates, of publicly traded companies in the period 2006–2012. We use an event study methodology for 460 events and daily stock price data for companies in the CRSP historical data set. The study shows a significant reaction in stock prices around the event date. On average, stock prices reacted positively to stock dividend announcements. However, compared to previous findings of abnormal returns (5.9%), results from this study show small abnormal returns (about 1.81%) attributable to stock dividend announcements that are cumulative of the announcement day and up to 3-day post-announcement days. Our estimates are even lower than the 2.01% stock price reaction obtained in the 1987–1996 period.     

民用爆炸物品价格放开对行业发展的影响及对策研究

民用爆炸物品价格放开政策给民爆行业发展带来了全面影响和挑战。行业经济形势下滑,业内企业竞争加剧,财务风险和安全风险加大,企业应对风险的能力强弱不同。企业将从扩大企业规模、向下游市场延伸、提高产品技术附加值、发展新兴产品和拓展产品新用途、形成市场协商机制等方面加以应对。政府部门通过调控许可产能、推动企业重组整合、促进新技术发展、加强市场监管等行政措施来改善市场环境。     

今年物价走势及调控政策建议

根据去年11月、12月和今年1月、2月的物价形势及分析物价涨落的主要原因,判断今年居民消费品价格指数将呈上涨趋势,而下半年生产资料价格会稳中趋降,因此,调控今年物价走势必须从实事求是的原则出发,从扩大消费需求、加大财政、货币政策支持力度、价格信息监控和重要商品储备等方面入手。     

Central bank policy announcements and changes in trading behavior: Evidence from bond futures high frequency price data

We present an analytical framework to investigate surprises in financial markets. The framework enables us to simultaneously identify and quantify surprises in security price data. By applying the framework to the tick-by-tick data on Japanese government bond futures prices, we find that the Bank of Japan’s introduction of quantitative and qualitative monetary easing in 2013 was one of the most surprising episodes during the period from 2005 to 2016. We also show that traders’ sensitivity to the Bank’s announcements has strengthened since the introduction of the negative interest rate policy in 2016, whereas their sensitivity to economic indicators and surveys has weakened substantially.     

Predictions of annual earnings using quarterly earnings,annual earnings and dividend payout ratios

This study empirically examines two issues related to forecasting annual accounting earnings. The first issue studied is the improvement in forecasts of annual earnings that can be obtained by including information about dividend payout along with the past earnings series in forecasting models. The second issue deals with the comparative ability of quarterly earnings time series models and annual earnings time series models to predict annual earnings. The results of this study indicate that considerable improvement in predictive ability can be obtained by expanding the information set to include the dividend payout ratio series. The empirical analysis also indicates that time series models developed using annual earnings generate more accurate predictions of annual earnings than do models developed using quarterly earnings.     

Immigrant earnings,relative to what? The importance of earnings function specification and comparison points

Immigrant relative earnings estimates are sensitive to the choice of comparison point and the specification of earnings. Non-sample mean comparisons (Borjas, 1985) understate relative earnings. Simple earnings specifications (linear education, quadratic experience) overstate relative earnings for both poorly and well-educated immigrants. Specifications which ignore omitted variables understate the relative earnings of poorly educated immigrants and overstate those of well-educated ones. Although measures of assimilation and changes in immigrant quality are insensitive to earnings specification, they indicate strong earnings growth for post-1964 immigrants, an overall decrease in immigrant quality, and an increase in Mexican immigrant quality.     

Return to education in Finland

This study presents estimates of the return to education in Finland using an individual-level data set that also includes ability measures and information on family background. It is found that ability test scores have a strong effect on the choice of education and on subsequent earnings. Estimating the return to education with no information on ability leads to an upward bias in the estimates. However, this bias is more than offset by a downward bias caused by endogeneity or measurement error. Instrumental variables estimates that utilize family background variables as instruments produce estimates of the return to schooling that are approximately 60% higher than the least squares estimates.     

Literacy and earnings: an investigation of the interaction of cognitive and unobserved skills in earnings generation

This paper uses direct measures of literacy to examine the influence of cognitive and unobserved skills on earnings. We find that cognitive skills contribute significantly to earnings and that their inclusion in earnings equations reduces the measured impact of schooling. The impact of literacy on earnings does not vary across quantiles of the earnings distribution, schooling and literacy do not interact in influencing earnings, and introducing literacy has little effect on the estimated impact of experience. Our findings suggest that cognitive and unobserved skills are both productive but that having more of one skill does not enhance the other's productivity.     

投资者异质性与会计盈余信息的市场反应

本文借鉴经济学和心理学最新研究成果,从信息使用者的角度,分析具有前景理论和心理账户理论描述特徵的异质投资者的非理性行为,封会计盈余信息所蕴含价值的市场反应的影响：研究发现,具有前景理论和心理账户理论描述特徵的异质投资者,会倾向于继续持有亏损的股票,并卖出赢利的股票。在这种情况下,股票价格对于新增会计盈余信息的变化,会受到投资者心理账户申对于自身所持股票赢利或亏损分类的影响,造成以股票价格变化来衡量的会计盈余信息价值含量降低。本文的研究成功地把投资者心理因素与行为偏差的影响引入会计研究领域中,为後续研究提供了新思路.     

The correlation of spouses' permanent and transitory earnings and family earnings inequality in Canada

I develop a very flexible error-component model of family earnings dynamics to examine recent Canadian trends in the variance of family earnings and its components using the ‘permanent-transitory’ analytical framework. In contrast to most studies of family earnings inequality, the main focus of this paper is on the trends in the correlation between spouses' permanent and transitory earnings. I find strong evidence of an increase in the correlation of spouses' permanent earnings before 1993 and no evidence of such an increase after 1993. However, the correlation of spouses' transitory earnings steadily increased throughout the 1990s and well into the 2000s.     

破解土地价格“剪刀差“难题——以重点城市的居住地价和工业地价为例

“剪刀差”概念源于20世纪20年代前苏联的超额税，是对不合理的工农业产品价格的概括，其实质是工农业产品的不等价交换。随着我国城市化和工业化的不断推进，地价“剪刀差”这一现象开始在我国土地市场领域中出现，而且这种差异呈现不断拉大的趋势。然而，学者们较多关注的是政府廉价征地和高价出让土地之间的地价“剪刀差”现象，对不同用途土地价格的‘剪刀差”现象研究得很少。因此，对近几年我国重点城市的居住地价和工业地价的“剪刀差”现象进行一些研究，分析不同用途土地价格‘剪刀差”存在的原因并提出解决方法，很有必要。