Does reporting position affect the pricing of the volatility of comprehensive income?

The FASB changed the reporting policy for comprehensive income (CI) by issuing ASU No. 2011-05, which requires CI be reported in performance statements (i.e., either a single income statement with net income or a separate statement of CI following the income statement) rather than the previously allowed equity statements. We examine whether the change in reporting position of CI led to higher market pricing of CI volatility incremental to NI volatility (“incremental CI volatility”), as measured by the price-earnings relationship. We find that the market pricing of incremental CI volatility increased from the pre- to the post-ASU period for non-financial firms forced to change the reporting position of CI from equity to performance statements. The increase is more prominent for firms that switched to the income statement than for firms that switched to a separate statement of CI. Further, we find that the increased market pricing of incremental CI volatility translates into lower valuation weights on other comprehensive income.     

Volatility and risk relevance of comprehensive income

Motivated by concerns that the volatility of comprehensive income leads to the perception of increased risk we investigate the volatility and risk relevance of comprehensive income relative to net income for a sample of non-financial firms over the period 2005–2010. We find that comprehensive income is more volatile than net income and that comprehensive income is associated with market-based measures of risk (volatility of stock returns and beta). However, the volatility of comprehensive income incremental to net income is not associated with market risk and is not priced. These results have important implications for the FASB in deciding whether to report comprehensive income in a single statement of performance.     

我国商业银行经营投资银行业务对风险影响的实证研究

本文以2009-2018年19家商业银行为研究对象,运用波动性分析、相关性分析及面板数据回归分析方法,考察了经营投资银行业务对银行风险的影响。研究结果表明,投资银行收入无明显周期性趋势,波动性明显高于利息净收入,经营投资银行业务会加剧银行业收入的不确定性,但由于收入占比较小,投资银行业务并非造成我国银行业收入波动的主要因素。多数银行的投资银行收入与利息净收入表现为正相关性,银行难以通过经营投资银行业务实现风险分散目的。投资银行业务对银行风险影响的回归结果较为显著,随着投资银行收入在银行收入结构中的权重越来越大,银行多元化收入程度随之加深,银行风险也随之下降。     

New Evidence on the Determinants of Bank Risk

This paper uses equity returns for publicly traded US bank holding companies (BHCs) from 1997 to 2004 to identify the determinants of risk, measured by equity market volatility, and examine how they have evolved. The results indicate that balance sheet items such as commercial and industrial loans and consumer lending and income statement items such as other noninterest income drive the cross-sectional differences in BHC risk. Newly mandated regulatory data on the components of other noninterest income show that investment banking, servicing, securitization income, gains from loan sales, gains other asset sales, and other noninterest income are particularly volatile activities. This highlights the value of increased transparency as a means to improve market discipline and reduce the opacity of complex financial institutions. Finally, in the years after 2000, the locus of risk has shifted off of the balance sheet and onto the income statement as investors identify the new risks associated with evolving and expanding bank activities.     

On the Usefulness of Operating Income,Net Income and Comprehensive Income in Explaining Security Returns

This study evaluates the usefulness of three earnings definitions (operating income, net income and comprehensive income) in explaining residual security returns. Usefulness is measured in terms of relative information content and incremental information content. In the former, the goodness-of-fit of the return-earnings relationship is compared under each earnings definition. In the latter, the increase in goodness-of-fit due to additional earnings components is measured. Based on a sample that averages 922 firms a year for 18 years, the analysis shows that operating income weakly dominates net income, and that both operating income and net income dominate comprehensive income, in information content. The results also show that those items that account for the difference between net income and operating income have incremental information content, but not those between net income and comprehensive income. The practical and academic contributions of these findings are discussed.     

Implied Equity Duration: A New Measure of Equity Risk

Duration is an important and well-established risk characteristic for fixed income securities. We use recent developments in financial statement analysis research to construct a measure of duration for equity securities. We find that the standard empirical predictions and results for fixed income securities extend to equity securities. We show that stock price volatility and stock beta are both positively correlated with equity duration. Moreover, estimates of common shocks to expected equity returns extracted using our measure of equity duration capture a strong common factor in stock returns. Additional analysis shows that the book-to-market ratio provides a crude measure of equity duration and that our more refined measure of equity duration subsumes the Fama and French (1993) book-to-market factor in stock returns. Our research shows how structured financial statement analysis can be used to construct superior measures of equity security risk.     

Bank earnings management and performance reporting of comprehensive income

FASB’s ASU 2011-05 mandated that comprehensive income (CI) and other comprehensive income (OCI) be reported in performance statements (a single income statement or a separate statement of CI) rather than equity statements. Employing a difference-in-differences research design with ASU 2011-05 as the treatment, I find that presenting accounting information in different statements affects bank earnings management, specifically, presenting CI and OCI in performance statements (especially in single-statements with net income) reduces earnings management through selective sales of available-for-sale (AFS) securities in the banking industry. I also find that the influence of ASU 2011-05 is primarily on banks with high equity incentives in the CEO’s compensation package or less CEO job security. Additional analyses suggest that performance reporting of CI and OCI increases the predictive ability of realized gains and losses of AFS securities; however, banks may manage loan loss provision as a substitute strategy when they have to decrease selective sales of AFS securities.     

Are there diversification benefits of increasing noninterest income in the Chinese banking industry?

This paper assesses the potential diversification benefits of the increasing reliance on nontraditional business activities based on data from the Chinese banking industry in 1986–2008. At the aggregate level, there are diversification benefits of the increase in noninterest income. However, noninterest income has higher volatility and cyclicality than net interest income, and the marginal benefit of diversification decreases with the increase in noninterest income. At the bank level, the correlation coefficients of the growth rates of net interest income and noninterest income are mostly negative, which also suggests that there are diversification benefits of increasing the noninterest income. However, further model analysis indicates that the effect of the noninterest income share on the Chinese banking industry's revenue and risk is not significant. Overall, our findings suggest that noninterest income diversifies bank revenue, but increased reliance on noninterest income may worsen the risk/return trade-off for the Chinese banking industry.     

Value Relevance of Comprehensive Income for the Canadian Market*

The value relevance of comprehensive income (CI) compared to net income (NI) remains unresolved. We look at this issue in the Canadian market, using association methods to determine the value relevance of reporting CI and other comprehensive income (OCI) components for stock prices and returns. The sample consists of all the firms in the S&P/TSX Composite Index that prepared their financial statements according to Canadian standards or International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) over the 2008–2016 period. Although we find no evidence that CI is more value relevant than NI for stock prices and returns, we note that some OCI components are incrementally value relevant beyond NI for both amounts. In addition, financial services firms differ from other companies in terms of the relationships between some of their OCI components and prices or returns, with such firms even driving some relationships. Relationships between OCI components and prices or returns are also affected when data from the financial crisis period are excluded, with some relationships even changing after IFRS adoption. These results inform Canadian standard setters and financial statement users that OCI components are decision useful for the Canadian market.     

Performance Reporting – The IASB's Proposed Formats of Financial Statements in the Exposure Draft of IAS 1

This paper is a response to the exposure draft of proposed amendments to IAS 1 Presentation of Financial Statements published by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) in March 2006. The objective is to bring to the standard setter's attention research that is relevant to the issues raised in the exposure draft. We review analytic, empirical and experimental research that addresses the presentation of income and the format of the income statement. Overall, there is some support for a single statement of (total) recognised income and expense. However, net income is on average more relevant than comprehensive income, which may favour a two-statement approach. While this result is in line with the IASB's option of the two formats, it does not support the IASB's preference for a single statement.     

On the value relevance of SFAS No. 158

After considerable discussion and some controversy, Statement of Financial Accounting Standards No. 158 entitled, “Employers’ Accounting for Defined Benefit Pension and Other Postretirement Plans” was implemented in 2006. An important goal of these standards was to enhance financial reporting transparency for defined benefit pension plans (FASB, 2006). This study evaluates how well SFAS No. 158 achieved its objective. In particular, we compare the respective pre and post-SFAS 158 incremental value relevance of the balance sheet and income statement for firms with defined benefit pension plans (DBPP). Results suggest that the value relevance of book value (net income) increased (decreased) for DBPP firms after the implementation of SFAS No. 158.     

新会计准则中合并报表理论变革的经济后果研究——基于少数股东权益、少数股东损益信息含量变化的研究

本文研究新会计准则在合并财务报表方面的变迁对少数股东权益和损益信息含量的影响。2006年2月15日颁布并于2007年实施的"新合并财务报表准则"(企业会计准则第33号——合并财务报表)相对旧准则做出了修改:规定少数股东权益在合并资产负债表所有者权益项目下单独列示;少数股东损益在合并利润表中净利润项目下单独列示。本文发现,新会计准下,少数股东权益的价值相关性显著提高,且显著高于净资产其他组成部分的价值相关性提高程度;少数股东损益信息含量显著增加,且增加量显著高于盈余的其他组成部分带来的信息增加量。本文的经验证据支持了新会计准则中合并财务报表的实体理论,研究结论说明,新会计准则的实施使得合并财务报表具有更多信息含量。     

Voluntary disclosure of operating income

This study investigates whether New Zealand firms’ voluntary disclosure of operating income, which is also known as earnings before interest and tax, in the income statement is related to the investment opportunity set. New Zealand provides an ideal setting to examine this because New Zealand generally accepted accounting principles do not require the disclosure of operating income as an intermediate income number in arriving at net income (earnings) in the income statement. We hypothesize and find evidence that firms with high assets‐in‐place and high leverage are more likely to voluntarily disclose operating income/earnings before interest and tax. However, the assets‐in‐place finding is sensitive to alternative measures of the investment opportunity set.     

Banks’ earnings: Empirical evidence of the influence of economic and financial market factors

The structure of income is a foremost address within research on banks’ performance, especially with regard to effects on the resilience of banks’ earnings. Indeed, given their central position in the economy, banks shall thrive to generate sustainable earnings and control for their potential volatility. Existing studies mostly consider the weight of non‐net interest income (nonNII) as opposed to the traditional NII income source. Such aggregated nonNII is found to increase earnings risk but more granular studies conflict. We propose an original investigation of the influence of economic and financial conditions on various income types, assuming that performance may actually be driven by both the income structure and external conditions. We focus European banks, which have long been allowed to diversify beyond retail banking. Out of a straight panel framework, we question if the influence of external conditions spreads to earnings components other than credit losses and trading income and if it does allow for diversification benefits among components. We find that each component actually evolves owing to its own equation. Furthermore, effects of single variables may cumulate over different components of earnings (e.g. GDP) or provide with diversification benefits. These effects are all the more important since they are not mitigated by operating expenses. Hence, over a regarded period, banks’ performance depends upon their structure of income and upon volatilities and correlations of influential variables. Besides controlling for ex‐ante volatility, our approach shows that a given structure of income is not necessarily more resilient than others but that selected non‐banking income may support a higher stability of Earnings     

Asset volatility

We examine whether fundamental measures of volatility are incremental to market-based measures of volatility in (i) predicting bankruptcies (out of sample), (ii) explaining cross-sectional variation in credit spreads, and (iii) explaining future credit excess returns. Our fundamental measures of volatility include (i) historical volatility in profitability, margins, turnover, operating income growth, and sales growth; (ii) dispersion in analyst forecasts of future earnings; and (iii) quantile regression forecasts of the interquartile range of the distribution of profitability. We find robust evidence that these fundamental measures of volatility improve out-of-sample forecasts of bankruptcy and help explain cross-sectional variation in credit spreads. This suggests that an analysis of credit risk can be enhanced with a detailed analysis of fundamental information. As a test case of the benefit of volatility forecasting, we document an improved ability to forecast future credit excess returns, particularly when using fundamental measures of volatility.     

公允价值会计与市场投资异象研究——来自中国上市公司的经验证据

以2007～2010年我国A股公司为样本,研究了上市公司在采用公允价值计量方式后是否会产生新的投资异象以及造成这种投资异象的影响因素。运用均值T检验和Wilcoxon符号等级检验,并采用Fama-French三因素模型对样本公司进行回归。研究发现,在控制了市场风险、规模风险和账面市值比风险之后,投资策略仍然可获得超常回报率,并且公允价值变动损益占净利润比重大(小)的组,超常回报率低(高)。套利风险、交易成本是公允价值变动损益对净利润的波动性风险造成的投资异象的影响因素。交易成本越大,套利风险越高,错误定价越不容易被消除,其超常回报率也越高。     

State‐preference pricing and volatility indices

This study uses a state‐preference pricing approach to develop a state‐price volatility index (SVX), as a forecast for market future realised volatility. We show that SVX is a more efficient forecaster than CBOE VIX for 30‐day realised volatility of SPX returns, using both in‐the‐sample and out‐of‐the‐sample tests. This result is robust to different measures of realised market volatilities. We also show that SVX provides a better volatility forecast than other alternative measures, including the at‐the‐money implied volatilities and GARCH (1, 1) volatility. Our results provide a foundation for forecasting higher risk‐neutral moments using the same state prices.     

Time Variation in Liquidity: The Role of Market-Maker Inventories and Revenues

We show that market-maker balance sheet and income statement variables explain time variation in liquidity, suggesting liquidity-supplier financing constraints matter. Using 11 years of NYSE specialist inventory positions and trading revenues, we find that aggregate market-level and specialist firm-level spreads widen when specialists have large positions or lose money. The effects are nonlinear and most prominent when inventories are big or trading results have been particularly poor. These sensitivities are smaller after specialist firm mergers, consistent with deep pockets easing financing constraints. Finally, compared to low volatility stocks, the liquidity of high volatility stocks is more sensitive to inventories and losses.     

On the qualitative effect of volatility and duration on prices of Asian options

We show that under the Black–Scholes assumption the price of an arithmetic average Asian call option with fixed strike increases with the level of volatility. This statement is not trivial to prove and for other models in general wrong. In fact we demonstrate that in a simple binomial model no such relationship holds. Under the Black–Scholes assumption however, we give a proof based on the maximum principle for parabolic partial differential equations. Furthermore we show that an increase in the length of duration over which the average is sampled also increases the price of an arithmetic average Asian call option, if the discounting effect is taken out. To show this, we use the result on volatility and the fact that a reparametrization in time corresponds to a change in volatility in the Black–Scholes model. Both results are extremely important for the risk management and risk assessment of portfolios that include Asian options.     

Fair value accounting for liabilities: The role of disclosures in unraveling the counterintuitive income statement effect from credit risk changes

When liabilities are accounted for at fair value, a deterioration of a company’s credit risk results in the reporting of an income statement gain; an improvement in a company’s credit risk results in a loss. Many argue that these income statement effects are counterintuitive and that financial statement-users are likely to misinterpret fair value gains as positive signals and fair value losses as negative signals. Utilizing an experiment with CPAs as participants, we find that these arguments are indeed valid. Specifically, we find that over 70% of the participants incorrectly assess a company’s credit risk as improving (deteriorating) when a fair value gain (loss) is recognized. We also find that disclosures that explicitly specify the relation between the direction of the credit risk change and the income statement effect significantly reduce participants’ misinterpretations, and are more beneficial when fair value gains versus losses are recognized. These findings provide empirical evidence in the debate over the recognition of company-specific credit risk changes and offer direction for improving disclosures in the area of fair value accounting.