Value relevance and the dot-com bubble of the 1990s

During the dot-com bubble of the 1990s, equity market valuation was a popular topic for investors, financial analysts and academics. Some questioned whether traditional accounting and financial information had lost its value relevance, as stocks traded at multiples of earnings well in excess of historic levels, leading Alan Greenspan to caution against “irrational exuberance.” This study examines the relation between market valuation and traditional accounting/financial information before, during and after the bubble. We confirm previous research that documents a decline in the relation between market value and traditional accounting information leading up to the bubble period. However, we also document that after the collapse of the bubble in 2000 this trend reverses. We also examine two related metrics that may provide a rational explanation for this phenomenon, including the quality of earnings, and the aggressiveness of financial analysts’ forecasts, finding some support that earnings quality may contribute to the changes in value relevance, but not the aggressiveness of analyst forecasts.     

基于债务风险的政府或有负债会计信息披露：国际经验与中国现实

或有负债可能引发的债务风险是导致政府财政危机的重要因素。当前我国的政府会计及报告体系未能有效地规范或有负债的信息披露,尤其在政府或有负债的确认、计量和报告上,存在着诸多管理真空。借鉴国际经验,需要从以下方面规范政府或有负债的会计信息披露：依据或有事项的发生可能性、事项性质、能否可靠计量等因素进行分类报告;在负债确认后加以持续关注;结合财务核算能力,对计量方法和报告方式做出具体规定;逐步完善政府会计基础向权责发生制转变;推进将或有负债纳入全口径预算管理。     

On the Relationship between Voluntary Disclosure,Earnings Smoothing and the Value-Relevance of Earnings: The Case of Switzerland

Abstract

This paper examines whether voluntary disclosure by Swiss firms constrains the use of discretionary accruals to smooth earnings, and explores the effect of voluntary disclosure on the value relevance of earnings. We focus on Swiss firms because Switzerland's financial reporting system provides managers with extensive discretion in corporate disclosure, and there are important variations in the level of information provided in their annual reports. We consider that managers can choose two different ways to voluntarily convey information, either through the quality and quantity of annual report disclosure or, through compliance with International Accounting Standards (IAS)/International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) or US Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). Relying on a simultaneous equations approach, our results suggest that Swiss firms use discretionary accruals to smooth earnings. However, this relation is reduced for firms that voluntarily disclose more information in their annual report or comply with IAS/IFRS or US GAAP. Moreover, we show that discretionary accruals of high disclosers or of firms voluntarily complying with IAS/IFRS or US GAAP receive a lower valuation weight.     

Accounting enlightenment in the age of reason

We scrutinize the role financial reporting for fair values, asset securitizations, derivatives and loan loss provisioning played in the Financial Crisis. Because banks were at the center of the Financial Crisis, we focus our discussion and analysis on the effects of financial reporting by banks. We conclude fair value accounting played little or no role in the Financial Crisis. However, transparency of information associated with asset securitizations and derivatives likely was insufficient for investors to assess properly the values and riskiness of bank assets and liabilities. Although the FASB and IASB have taken laudable steps to improve disclosures relating to asset securitizations, in our view, the approach for accounting for securitizations in the IASB's Exposure Draft that would require banks to recognize whatever assets and liabilities they have after the securitization is executed better reflects the underlying economics of the securitization transaction. Regarding derivatives, we recommend disclosure of more disaggregated information, disclosure of the sensitivity of derivatives' fair values to changes in market risk variables, and implementing a risk-equivalence approach to enable investors to understand better the leverage inherent in derivatives. We also conclude that because the objectives of bank regulation and financial reporting differ, changes in financial reporting needed to improve transparency of information provided to the capital markets likely will not be identical to changes in bank regulations needed to strengthen the stability of the banking sector. We discuss how loan loss provisioning may have contributed to the Financial Crisis through its effects on procyclicality and on the effectiveness of market discipline. Accounting standard setters and bank regulators should find some common ground. However, it is the responsibility of bank regulators, not accounting standard setters, to ensure the stability of the financial system.     

The effects of accounting regulations on stock valuation and volatility: Evidence from the banking industry

Banking regulators and market participants learn from price signals in the stock market (e.g., Flannery, Journal of Money, Credit and Banking 30: 273, 1998). Therefore, the system becomes more secure and developed as stock prices become more informative about banks’ financial conditions. Using a sample that includes major banks from 35 countries, this study investigates how accounting regulations affect bank stock valuation and volatility. The evidence suggests that bank stocks have higher valuation and lower volatility in countries that strictly regulate the quality of external audits and financial statement transparency. This study presents a comprehensive picture of the effects of bank accounting regulations on the stock market.     

Variations in the Financial Reporting Environment and Earnings Forecasting

This paper examines variations in the financial reporting environment internationally. In particular, I investigate the relation between variations in accounting‐related institutional factors (choice, accrual accounting and enforcement) and the accuracy of analysts' earnings forecasts. Controlling for firm‐ and country‐level factors, I document that the extent of choice among accounting methods is associated with lower forecast accuracy. This finding is consistent with analysts' performance suffering from the increased task complexity (and/or managers using flexibility for purposes other than to provide information). The degree of prescribed accrual accounting is positively correlated with forecast accuracy, consistent with both accruals providing useful information and with the smoothing function of accruals. Enforcement of accounting standards is positively related with forecast accuracy, suggesting that enforcement encourages managers to follow prescribed rules, which, in turn, reduces analysts' uncertainty. Finally, I examine whether the roles of accrual accounting and choice vary with the level of enforcement. Although univariate tests support these interaction hypotheses, multivariate tests do not.     

The Usefulness of Earnings and Book Value for Equity Valuation in Emerging Capital Markets: Evidence From Listed Companies in the People's Republic of China

This paper examines the relative value relevance in equity valuation of two sets of accounting information of listed Chinese companies which issued the so-called B shares to foreign investors on the Chinese stock exchanges. These firms are required to prepare two sets of financial statements: one based on China's accounting regulations (domestic GAAPs) and the other based on International Accounting Standards (IASs). The study adopted the Ohlson (1995) model and used the Davidson-MacKinnon J-test to assess which one of these two competing sets of accounting information is more closely associated with the share prices. The results showed that earnings and book value reported based on IASs have greater information content than those based on domestic GAAPs. The results of yearly regression analysis generally suggested that the explanatory power of these earnings and book values for share prices increased over time.     

Ownership Structure and Accounting Information Content: Evidence from France

This paper investigates how family and bank ownership affect the accounting information content of French firms. In Continental Europe, the existence of block‐holders triggers specific corporate governance issues, including the transparency of financial reporting. Our test results for the clean surplus model show that book value carries a significantly greater weight for family‐controlled firms. This finding is attributed to their lack of incentive to report timely and relevant earnings to outside (minority) investors. In contrast, bank owners are under more market pressure to achieve earnings persistence through the use of accounting accruals. Bank ownership is also associated with higher levels of debt. These results are consistent with findings that in code law countries, insiders dominate as a source of finance, and financial reporting is aimed at creditor protection.     

Why More Forward-Looking Accounting Standards Can Reduce Financial Reporting Quality

A premise of standard setters and of much empirical research is that improving the quality of accounting standards and their implementation increases information in capital markets. This paper challenges this premise and shows that there are situations in which ‘better’, that is, more forward-looking, accounting standards reduce the information content of financial reports. The reason is that a forward-looking accounting standard affects the smoothness of reported earnings, which can conflict with the manager's smoothing incentive and her willingness to incorporate private information in the financial report. Although the manager could eliminate the effect by earnings management, it is too costly to do so. As a consequence, the capital market's ability to infer the financial and nonfinancial information in reported earnings declines. This finding should increase the awareness that an ‘improvement’ in accounting standards, without considering incentives and other information residing in firms, can adversely affect the quality of financial reporting.     

The relationship between environmental information disclosure and firm valuation: the role of corporate governance

Hopwood argued that accounting has become associated with environmental concerns, and that environmental concerns will be further integrated into accounting practices in the near future. The McKinsey Company discovered that environmental information affects a firm’s value, and that investors in firms with good corporate governance in Asian countries are willing to pay a price premium of 20 % or greater. The increasing need for environmental protection and responsibility to the community on the part of firms have led to environmental protection becoming a critical focal concern of governments, public welfare associations, and the public. Effective implementation of corporate governance has been reported to enhance operating performance and increase firm value. This study applies the Ohlson valuation model to examine the value relevance of environmental information disclosure and corporate governance, and investigate their on firms in Taiwan. The results indicate relationships between total disclosure of environmental information, mandatory disclosure of environmental information, and voluntary disclosure of environmental information and firm value. Corporate governance is positively correlated with the valuation of total disclosure of environmental information and mandatory disclosure of environmental information.     

Financial reporting in the context of crisis: reconsidering the impact of the 'mania' on early railway accounting

The patterns of change in the financial reporting practices of the early railway companies, and their causes, are important aspects of the evolution of accounting practice more generally. They have accordingly been widely discussed in the literature, although the views expressed have rarely been supported by reference to any very substantial or systematically derived bodies of empirical evidence. One of the most interesting and important suggestions in this literature is the claim that the early UK railway companies voluntarily made both quantitative and qualitative changes to their published accounting statements, in response to a crisis in shareholder confidence in the second half of the 1840s, consequent upon the collapse of the railway mania of 1845–47. The quantitative response involved the disclosure of far more information and the qualitative led to changes in the conceptual basis of reporting, from a cash to an accruals basis, changes that met with the satisfaction of the shareholders concerned and were important parts of the gradual evolution of financial reporting. The paper undertakes a systematic analysis of the financial accounting practices of the major early railway companies from 1840 until 1855. The mapping of the variety of such practices, and their changes over time, enable a re-examination of these important claims concerning the nature of the financial reporting response to one of its earliest crises.     

The Decision Usefulness of Fair Value Accounting – A Theoretical Perspective

ABSTRACT

Regulators such as the SEC and standard setting bodies such as the FASB and the IASB argue the case for the conceptual desirability of fair value measurement, notably on the relevance dimension. Recent standards on financial instruments and certain non-financial items adopt the new measurement paradigm. This paper takes issue with the notion of decision usefulness of a fair-value-based reporting system from a theoretical perspective. Emphasis is put on the evaluation of the theoretical soundness of the arguments put forward by regulators and standard setting bodies. The analysis is conducted as economic (a priori) analysis. Two approaches to decision usefulness are adopted, the measurement or valuation perspective and the information perspective. Findings indicate that the decision relevance of fair value measurement can be justified from both perspectives, yet the conceptual case is not strong. The information aggregation notion that underlies standard setters' endorsement of fair value measurement turns out to be theoretically restricted in its validity and applicability. Also, comparative analysis of fair value accounting vs. historical cost accounting yields mixed results. One immediate implication of the research – a condition for the further implementation of fair value accounting – is the need to clarify standard setters' notion of accounting income, its presumed contribution to decision relevance and its disaggregation.     

Earnings Management and the Accrual Anomaly: Evidence from China

Using the unique Chinese setting in which the “delisting regulation” is based on accounting numbers, we separate earnings management into (1) earnings management responding to regulation and (2) earnings management prompted by market pressures and further document that earnings management responding to market pressures produces the accrual anomaly (Sloan, 1996) and earnings management responding to regulation does not. Initially unable to detect the accrual anomaly in China's stock market, we were reluctant to conclude that China's market is more efficient than that in the United States. After observing a disproportionate number of “big‐bath” loss firm‐years in the lowest decile of accruals for our sample, we estimated the apparent earnings distortion induced by the delisting regulation. When we excluded this distortion from our analysis, we documented the presence of the accrual anomaly in China's stock market. We conclude that the delisting regulation creates an artificial distribution of firm earnings in China that affects the market pricing of accruals and masks the accrual anomaly. The results have implications for policy makers and regulators in general, and those in emerging markets in particular.     

An Evaluation of the Value Relevance of Consolidated versus Unconsolidated Accounting Information: Evidence from Quoted Spanish Firms

In this paper we investigate the value-relevance of consolidated versus parent company accounting information. In particular we investigate the value relevance of the minority interest components of net total assets and earnings as currently reported and under the full entity approach to consolidated reporting. An Edwards-Bell-Ohlson valuation framework is used to generate results. By this means we cast light on the suitability of accounting regulation being developed based upon the entity or parent company theories of consolidation. We carry out the analysis in the Spanish context and the sample contains 474 observations of non-financial firms quoted in the Madrid Stock Exchange for the period 1991–97. The results from this analysis not only have domestic relevance but provide guidance of a more international nature relating to the impact of group definition, concepts of control and the most value relevant method of consolidated disclosure. The results show that, from a valuation perspective, consolidated information dominates non-consolidated, or parent company, information. However, neither the currently reported minority interest components of net total assets and earnings, nor their values under the full equity method of consolidation, are found to be value relevant. These results raise the question of whether group definitions based on the equity theory of consolidation are the most useful to investors.     

The role of cash flows and accruals in explaining security returns: evidence for the UK

The assessment of earnings usefulness in returns studies has been at the forefront of accounting research since the seminal work of Ball and Brown (1968). Recently, regulatory bodies worldwide have paid increased attention to cash flow reporting. Empirical research provides evidence that earnings information dominates cash flows in market-based accounting research. This study extends the growing empirical literature on the association of earnings and cash flows with security returns. We hypothesize that the association of cash flows with security returns improves (i) the smaller the absolute magnitude of aggregate accruals, (ii) the longer the measurement interval and (iii) the shorter the firm's operating cycle. The dataset consists of all UK firms included in the Global vantage database for the period 1984–1992. This study provides evidence that cash flows play a more important role in the marketplace when the operating cycle, magnitude of accruals and the measurement interval are taken into consideration. Moreover, results indicate that cash flows have more information content than earnings in explaining security returns.     

Management practices in Australasian ethical investment products: a role for regulation?

This paper adds to the literatures on socially responsible investment (SRI), investment management, regulation of financial services and social accounting by providing a comprehensive survey of investment methods used in SRI products and regulated social reporting in financial services. Australian and New Zealand regulations require issuers of self‐declarative SRI products to provide details on methods used in portfolio construction. Regulators' objectives to standardize the reporting of portfolio construction and thus improve its comparability were identified by examination of parliamentary debates and other public reports. Portfolio construction styles of 86 SRI products managed by 63 financial institutions in Australia and New Zealand were chosen for analysis. Statistical analysis was conducted to identify associations between styles, construction methods and assessment techniques over a four‐year period: 2004–2007. These aspects were further examined in 18 case studies. Over the period, diversity and intensity of construction methods had increased both within and between investment managers. The non‐standard nature of management consultation used in SRI products, marketing needs to distinguish rather than standardize investment methods and the types of information thought relevant to clients did not reconcile easily with the types of information required by regulation. The more recent products in the sample tended to reference market indexes in portfolio construction, separate social considerations from financial considerations and delegate qualitative assessments of invested companies. Consumer policy implications arise from questions bearing on the integrity of information attached to investment products and the effective monitoring of delegated investment processes. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

The Value Relevance of Environmental Audits: Evidence from Japan

Environmental audits are implemented internally in order to monitor compliance with environmental laws, regulations and related accounting rules, and to develop recommendations for ways in which to improve environmental accounting processes and performance. In addition, external third‐party assurance on environmental information is used to verify whether firms’ disclosures on environmental information are in compliance with environmental accounting rules and regulations. We examine whether firms’ environmental audits positively affect their market values and whether third‐party assurance strengthens positive effects, using value relevance theory as a theoretical foundation. Our main tests are based on 266 Japanese manufacturing firms’ published environmental reports for the period 2010–2013. We find that the average market value of firms that implement environmental audits is 9 percent greater than those that do not. Further, we find that environmental audits positively affect firm value, largely through interaction with third‐party assurance. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

The contractual and value relevance of reported earnings in a dividend-focused environment

This study investigates the relevance of reported earnings in the context of an institutional environment, i.e., Switzerland, in which investors focus on dividends. In conjunction with a dividend focus, the financial reporting environment faced by Swiss firms provides their managers with more accounting discretion than managers of Anglo-Saxon firms typically have. From a contractual perspective, dividendbased earnings management is expected since Swiss corporate law explicitly states that dividends, which must be voted on by stockholders, are to be based upon a firm's reported earnings. From a value perspective, thin trading conditions and a long-term investment horizon are expected to increase the importance of dividend payments and to influence the informativeness of reported earnings. Results indicate that Swiss managers do engage in dividend-based earnings management, that earnings quality signals are used by managers to voluntarily constrain their accounting choices and that the value relevance of earnings is conditional upon dividend payments.     

Accounting for Employee Stock Options: What Can We Learn from the Market's Perceptions?

The scope of this is paper is to provide new empirical evidence on the value relevance of employee stock options (ESOs) in Europe. We show, empirically, that the market participants when pricing a firm's equity place approximately the same valuation weights on the ESO‐deferred compensation expense (the so called “ESO asset”) and the compensation option liability (the so called “ESO liability”). Our empirical findings support the theoretical work of Ohlson and Penman who suggest that the deferred compensation expense be treated as a contra‐liability. The second contribution of our work rests on the nature of the ESO expense. We show that the distinction between persistent and non‐persistent ESO expenses is of critical importance for the market participants. Accordingly, an improved accounting disclosure should assist the investors in assessing the long‐term goals of the ESO plans at the firm level.