Financial statement presentation of discontinued operations: Determinants and consequences

US GAAP requires firms to separately report income from discontinued operations within the income statement. Current financial reporting guidance, however, allows managers to either aggregate or disaggregate operating income (or loss) and gain (or loss) from discontinued operations on the face of the income statement. Using this unique setting, we hand-collect data on the presentation of discontinued operations (i.e., aggregated versus disaggregated presentation) to understand factors that affect the discretionary presentation choices in financial statements. We show that managers' disaggregation preference in reporting discontinued operations reflect properties of prospect theory and mental accounting theory. We fail to find empirical evidence that investors' valuation of discontinued operations is different for aggregated and disaggregated presentations. These results should help managers, regulators, and investors understand the implications of discontinued operations' presentation choices in financial reporting.     

Expected income in the demand for money: An ‘unobservable variable’ analysis

A demand for money function is specified with unobservable expected (or permanent) income as one of the explanatory variables. The model is formulated within the latent or unobservable framework and considers two cases. First, where there is a simple ‘measurement error’ relationship between latent and actual magnitudes, and second where expected income is assumed generated by a more dynamic mechanism. In both cases a consumption function with permanent income as an explanatory variable is incorporated into the model to supply the information necessary to identify the structural parameters. Identification of the models is discussed and a suitable estimation procedure developed and applied to time series data for the United Kingdom.     

Testing the cross-section implications of Friedman's permanent income hypothesis

We use modern household data and econometric methods to conduct some of the original tests of the permanent income hypothesis (PIH) suggested and used by Friedman [1957. A Theory of the Consumption Function. Princeton University Press, Princeton]. The data and methods are superior to those available to Friedman, allowing us to refine Friedman's tests and perform tests he could not do. The results provide overall though not universal support for PIH.     

On the IASB comprehensive income project: an analysis of the case for dual income display

The IASB is presently involved in a project on reporting comprehensive income. Since the IASB accounting model mixes two income determination systems, namely, historical cost accounting and fair value accounting, an interesting question pertains to whether the display of comprehensive income should reflect the existence of these two paradigms. This article scrutinizes, from both the points of view of accounting theory and a valuation perspective, the typical arguments made by proponents of historical cost net income and comprehensive fair value income. It finds that claims for exclusive reliance on a single concept of income are untenable. The analysis provides arguments in defence of an income display that explicitly features both income concepts. Such a dual income display would correspond to a categorization of comprehensive income that is currently investigated in the IASB performance reporting project. However, given the importance of summarization in financial analysis, as is most extremely reflected in the focus on the earnings per share (EPS) number, the case for a dual income display should also be considered at the highest level of summarization of financial performance reporting. In other words, mandatory publication of two EPS numbers, one for net income, and one for comprehensive income, should be considered. Possible effects on perception and actual use of financial reports that should enter such a consideration are suggested as topics for experimental research.     

An analysis of the implications of diversity for students' first level accounting performance

The present study investigates the impact of student diversity on performance of first-year undergraduate accounting students. The paper is motivated by (i) increasing diversity amongst the accounting student cohort because of the trend to internationalise education services in industrialised countries; and (ii) inconsistent and inconclusive prior evidence on the determinants of accounting student performance. The major contribution of the present paper is to provide a theoretical framework from the published educational literature that can explain much of the variation in the findings of prior studies. We employ this framework to develop and test several propositions in relation to students’ prior content and metacognitive knowledge. The results indicate students studying on-campus significantly outperform students studying by distance education. On average, international students studying on-campus perform better than domestic students (studying either on- or off-campus), with international students studying off-campus performing worst of all. Prior high school accounting, tertiary entrance score and motivation (reflected by both major of study and tutorial attendance) also influence student performance.     

An empirical analysis of continuing improvements following the implementation of a performance-based compensation plan

Performance improvements subsequent to the implementation of a pay-for-performance plan can result because more productive employees self-select into the firm (selection effect) and because employees allocate effort to become more effective (effort effect). We analyze individual performance data for 3,776 sales employees of a retail firm to evaluate these alternative sources of continuing performance improvement. The incentive plan helps the firm attract and retain more productive sales employees, and motivates these employees to further improve their productivity. In contrast, the less productive sales employees’ performance declines before they leave the firm.     

Bank income structure and risk: An empirical analysis of European banks

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between bank risk and product diversification in the changing structure of the European banking industry. Based on a broad set of European banks for the period 1996–2002, our study first shows that banks expanding into non-interest income activities present higher risk and higher insolvency risk than banks which mainly supply loans. However, considering size effects and splitting non-interest activities into both trading activities and commission and fee activities we show that the positive link with risk is mostly accurate for small banks and essentially driven by commission and fee activities. A higher share of trading activities is never associated with higher risk and for small banks it implies, in some cases, lower asset and default risks.     

中小证券公司后台业务外包分析

随着证券市场的发展,各中小证券公司后台日益庞大,后台系统投入大幅增长,但业务范围和营销能力并未随之大幅增加,导致后台出现产能过剩,产生大马拉小车和IT黑洞等现象。由于成本原因,目前许多中小证券公司管理层对新系统的投入和团队建设处于彷徨境地。本文提出通过将后台业务外包,来解决中小证券公司后台成本居高不下的问题。     

An empirical assessment of the residual income valuation model

This paper provides an empirical assessment of the residual income valuation model proposed in Ohlson (Ohlson, J.A., 1995. Earnings, book values and dividends in security valuation. Contemporary Accounting Research 11, 661–687). We point out that existing empirical research relying on Ohlson's model is similar to past research relying explicitly on the dividend-discounting model. We establish that the key original empirical implications of Ohlson's model stem from the information dynamics that link current information to future residual income. Our empirical results generally support Ohlson's information dynamics. However, we find that our empirical implementation of Ohlson's model provides only minor improvements over existing attempts to implement the dividend-discounting model by capitalizing short-term earnings' forecasts in perpetuity.     

Health insurers' operations in the face of health care reform: An analysis of the Supplemental Health Care Exhibit

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) introduced significant changes to the health insurance marketplace in the United States. The act also imposed reporting requirements on insurers. The law has required insurers since 2010 to file yearly the Supplemental Health Care Exhibit (SHCE). The SHCE provides unique information on how health insurers operate. We analyze data in the SCHE to understand how insurers have complied with one of the major new regulations affecting health insurers' operations arising from the ACA—the Medical Loss Ratio (MLR) Provision. This requires that insurers spend a minimum percentage of their premium revenue on medical claims, quality improvement expenses, and deductible fraud and abuse detection and recovery expenses. Our analysis of the 2010–2017 SHCE indicates that insurers' underwriting performance worsened in the early years of the ACA as they worked to increase MLRs to become ACA‐compliant. Analysis of the SHCE further reveals that insurers' profits from managing uninsured plans grew as the profitability of underwriting insured plans decreased. Future research on health insurer operations is warranted. The currently underutilized and data‐rich SHCE provides unique information that makes future research possible.     

CFO role and CFO compensation: An empirical analysis of their implications

Given concerns over CFO pay, especially incentives, and considering the tension between a CFO’s fiduciary responsibility and being a key member of the firm’s executive team, we examine the determinants and effects of CFO compensation amount, incentive intensity, and proximity to CEO compensation in a sample of European companies (FTE 500, 2005–2009). First, we focus on the CFO role as a determinant of CFO compensation. Like prior work, we proxy for CFO roles by using hand-collected public data on education and past professional experience, but we supplement these proxies with proprietary data to more directly capture the firm-specific nature of the CFO job in term of its similarity with that of the CEO. We thus argue how CFOs can have varied roles characterized by different levels of financial expertise and CEO-likeness, and document that it is this latter aspect that is associated with CFO compensation. Second, we study the effects of CFO compensation design on outcomes in the CFO’s realm related to financial reporting. We find that CFO financial expertise is positively associated with financial reporting quality, while a CFO’s pay long-term incentive intensity and a CFO’s incentive compensation proximity with the CEO are negatively associated with financial reporting quality. Overall, then, our results suggest that CFOs get rewarded for their CEO-likeness, and particularly for their being similar to the CEO in terms of tasks and decision making authority. But it is their financial expertise that is positively related to financial reporting quality. At the same time, using compensation that is more incentive intensive and more similar to that of the CEO appears to be potentially detrimental to the quality of financial reporting. These results are relevant for boards involved in selecting highly expert CFOs, and their compensation committees charged with defining subsequently effective incentive compensation plans for those CFOs.     

Towards an understanding of profitability analysis within the residual income valuation framework

This paper argues that there is a mis-match between formal theoretical accounting valuation models, and practical approaches to profitability analysis and valuation. In particular, none of the linear information models published to date exhibit an obvious role for profitability analysis. For example, in the standard Ohlson model, earnings and book value apparently summarise all the value relevant information available from the firm's financial statements and there is no apparent need for any further investigation of the accounting numbers beyond these specific line items. The purpose of this paper is to attempt to investigate potential analytical links between formal valuation models and practical profitability analysis. Specifically, we attempt to show how key features of practical profitability analysis might be incorporated into formal valuation models. In this respect there are two particular aspects of valuation practice to which the formal models published to date have paid no attention. First, in practice we often see explicit reference made to the demand side (sales), and supply side (costs) of the business. Second, we often see attempts to benchmark the financial ratios of one firm against the corresponding ratios of firms in the same industry. The purpose of this paper is to attempt to explain why such practices make sense in the context of an attempt to model the principal determinants of firm value within a residual income valuation framework.     

An evaluation of SFAS No. 130 comprehensive income disclosures

In this study, we provide evidence on the pricing of other comprehensive income (OCI) that differs from most evidence in prior research. Prior archival research has largely concluded that OCI is not priced by investors. In contrast, we provide evidence in the post-SFAS 130 period that OCI is priced on a dollar-for-dollar basis as is predicted by economic theory for transitory income items. We attribute this finding to our use of post-SFAS 130 as-reported measures of OCI rather than pre-SFAS 130 as-if estimates of OCI measures. Furthermore, we document that two components of OCI, foreign currency translation adjustment and unrealized gains/losses on available-for-sale securities, are priced by investors. In the post-SFAS 130 period, we also find that the type of financial statement in which firms report OCI and its components affects pricing, consistent with the conclusions of prior experimental research. However, our evidence suggests that investors pay greater attention to OCI information reported in the statement of changes in equity, rather than in a statement of financial performance. This could be attributed to investors becoming more familiar in the post-SFAS 130 period with the predominant reporting of OCI and its components in the statement of changes in equity. These findings may be relevant to both the Financial Accounting Standards Board and the International Accounting Standards Board, which jointly are undertaking a new project that, in part, is addressing financial statement presentation of OCI items.

A normative analysis of capital income taxes in the presence of aggregate risk

A simple portfolio model is used to examine the efficiency effects of capital income taxes when the economy faces aggregate risk. To achieve a first best optimum the use of state contingent lump sum taxes is required. Through the tax policy the riskiness of total consumption is partly assigned to the private consumption and partly to the public consumption. State independent income taxes may generate a misallocation of risk and distort the allocation of resources between assets. The second best optimum, representing a trade-off between these inefficiencies, is characterized. Uniform taxation is shown to be optimal only in very special cases. Finally, the second best optimality rule for public consumption is extended to the case of uncertainty.     

An analysis of the implications of uncertainty and agency problems on the wealth effects to acquirers of private firms

Extensive empirical work shows that bidders do not gain from the acquisition of publicly traded targets but experience positive excess returns in the acquisition of privately held firms. This study investigates how two important differences between private and public firms, namely, informational uncertainty and ownership characteristics, impact the returns to acquirers. A sample of targets that were acquired shortly after filing for an IPO was collected to circumvent the lack of information on private firms. In spite of the special characteristics of these targets, the listing effect is still prevalent in this sample. The results of the analysis are consistent with the hypothesis that acquirers gain in the acquisition of private firms because these targets have a relatively weaker bargaining position due to informational and agency problems and costly access to external capital markets to finance growth opportunities.     

The income elasticity of tax revenue: estimates for income and consumption taxes in the United Kingdom

This paper provides estimates of individual and aggregate revenue elasticities of income and consumption taxes in the UK over the period 1989–2000. It shows how budgetary changes, including changes to income‐related deductions, have substantially affected income elasticities. The estimates of consumption tax revenue elasticities show that changes in consumption patterns over time are important. A merit of the approach used here is that elasticity estimates can be calculated readily from official published sources.     

An income strategy approach to the positive theory of accounting standard setting/choice

This paper is designed to provide additional evidence on the positive theory of accounting policy choice by combining individual accounting principles into firm income strategies. These strategies were the dependent variable in a probit analysis where the independent variables were size, management compensation, industry concentration ratio, systematic risk, capital intensity and the total debt to total asset ratio. The results indicate that four of these factors (size, management compensation, concentration ratio, and the total debt to total asset ratio) have a significant association with the choice of a firm's income strategy. This test provides strong evidence consistent with the positive theory of accounting standard setting/choice. We also present evidence that smaller firms and/or firms in less concentrated industries do not appear to make accounting policy choice decisions that are consistent with this theory.