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Abstract:
Using financial accounting data from manufacturing firms in 16 countries for 1986-1995, we demonstrate that the value relevance of financial reports is lower for countries where the financial systems are bank-oriented rather than market-oriented; where private sector bodies are not involved in standard setting process; where accounting practices follow the Continental model as opposed to the British-American model; where tax rules have a greater influence on financial accounting measurements; and where spending on auditing services is relatively low. Results are robust to alternative measures of value relevance of financial accounting data, including measures based on earnings (using a regression and a hedge-portfolio approach), accruals, and earnings and book value of equity combined. We show that the extent to which earnings information is reflected in leading-period returns as compared to contemporaneous returns is greater for bank-oriented than for market-oriented countries. This feature potentially induces spurious associations between value relevance measures and financial system characteristics. Our results are robust to using value relevance measures adjusted for this confounding effect.

Abstract:
Using financial accounting data from manufacturing firms in 16 countries for 1986-1995, we demonstrate that the value relevance of financial reports is lower for countries where the financial systems are bank-oriented rather than market-oriented; where private sector bodies are not involved in standard setting process; where accounting practices follow the Continental model as opposed to the British-American model; where tax rules have a greater influence on financial accounting measurements; and where spending on auditing services is relatively low. Results are robust to alternative measures of value relevance of financial accounting data, including measures based on earnings (using a regression and a hedge-portfolio approach), accruals, and earnings and book value of equity combined. We show that the extent to which earnings information is reflected in leading-period returns as compared to contemporaneous returns is greater for bank-oriented than for market-oriented countries. This feature potentially induces spurious associations between value relevance measures and financial system characteristics. Our results are robust to using value relevance measures adjusted for this confounding effect.

Abstract:
We explore whether the association between accruals and future returns documented by Sloan (1996) is due to fixation by naive investors on the total amount of reported earnings without regard for the relative magnitude of the accrual and cash flow components. Contrary to the predictions of the naive investor hypothesis, we find that the predictive ability of accruals for subsequent annual returns and for quarterly earnings-announcement stock returns is not lower for large firms or for firms followed more by analysts or held more by institutions. Further, we find that the ability of accruals to predict future returns does not seem to depend on stock price or transaction volume, measures of transaction costs, also contrary to predictions of the naive investor hypothesis. These results are robust to regression and hedge portfolio tests. We conclude that the predictive ability of accruals for subsequent returns does not seem to be due to the inability of market participants to understand value-relevant information.

Abstract:
We explore whether the association between accruals and future returns documented by Sloan (1996) is due to fixation by naive investors on the total amount of reported earnings without regard for the relative magnitude of the accrual and cash flow components. Contrary to the predictions of the naive investor hypothesis, we find that the predictive ability of accruals for subsequent annual returns and for quarterly earnings-announcement stock returns is not lower for large firms or for firms followed more by analysts or held more by institutions. Further, we find that the ability of accruals to predict future returns does not seem to depend on stock price or transaction volume, measures of transaction costs, also contrary to predictions of the naive investor hypothesis. These results are robust to regression and hedge portfolio tests. We conclude that the predictive ability of accruals for subsequent returns does not seem to be due to the inability of market participants to understand value-relevant information.

Abstract:
Compared to non-family firms, family firms face less severe agency problems due to the separation of ownership and management, but more severe agency problems that arise between controlling and non-controlling shareholders. These characteristics of family firms affect their corporate disclosure practices. For S&P 500 firms, we show that family firms report better quality earnings, are more likely to warn for a given magnitude of bad news, but make fewer disclosures about their corporate governance practices. Consistent with family firms making better financial disclosures, we find that family firms have larger analyst following, more informative analysts' forecasts, and smaller bid-ask spreads.

U.S. family firms, Corporate disclosure, Earnings quality, Corporate governance disclosure, Management forecasts

Abstract:
Compared to non-family firms, family firms face less severe agency problems due to the separation of ownership and management, but more severe agency problems that arise between controlling and non-controlling shareholders. These characteristics of family firms affect their corporate disclosure practices. For S&P 500 firms, we show that family firms report better quality earnings and are more likely to warn for a given magnitude of bad news. However, family firms make fewer disclosures about their corporate governance practices. Consistent with family firms making better financial disclosures, we find that family firms have larger analyst following, lower dispersion in analysts' earnings forecasts, smaller forecast errors, less volatile forecast revisions, and smaller bid-ask spreads.

corporate disclosures, family firms, agency problems, earnings quality, management forecasts

Abstract:
We show that stock characteristics identified by D'Avolio (2002) provide a reliable index of the mostly unobservable short sales constraints. Specifically, we find that this index is positively related to the level of short interest and to short selling costs implied by the disparity in prices in the options and stock markets, and is negatively related to future returns. Using this index, we show that the magnitude of momentum returns for the period 1984 to 2001 is positively related to short sales constraints, and loser stocks rather than winner stocks drive this result. We conclude that short sales constraints are important in preventing arbitrage of momentum in stock returns.

Abstract:
We show that stock characteristics identified by D'Avolio (2002) provide a reliable index of the mostly unobservable short sales constraints. Specifically, we find that this index is positively related to the level of short interest and to short selling costs implied by the disparity in prices in the options and stock markets, and is negatively related to future returns. Using this index, we show that the magnitude of momentum returns for the period 1984 to 2001 is positively related to short sales constraints, and loser stocks rather than winner stocks drive this result. We conclude that short sales constraints are important in preventing arbitrage of momentum in stock returns.

Momentum returns, short sales constraints

Abstract:
We find that the magnitude of momentum returns for the period 1983 to 2001 is related to short sales constraint determinants identified by D'Avolio (2002). The signs of the relations are consistent with stocks with higher short sales constraints exhibiting greater momentum returns. Moreover, loser stocks rather than winner stocks drive the results. We also show that stock characteristics identified by D'Avolio (2002) provide a reliable index of short sales constraints. We find that this index is positively related to the level of short interest and to short selling costs implied by the disparity in prices in the options and stock markets, and is negatively related to future returns.

Momentum returns, short sales constraints

Abstract:
This study documents an association between changes in institutional ownership during a calendar quarter and abnormal returns at the time of subsequent announcements of quarterly earnings. The result is driven by the portfolio returns of the extreme deciles of changes in institutional ownership, suggesting that institutions trade based on information about future earnings, but that such trading is not widespread. We also find that the difference between earnings announcement returns of the extreme deciles of change in institutional ownership is much greater when change in institutional ownership of a stock is driven by relatively few institutions, measured using the skewness of the distribution of change in institutional ownership of the stock. This result suggests that when fewer differentially informed investors make disproportionately large purchases or sales of stocks, a greater amount of the information on which they base their trades is not impounded in prices until the subsequent earnings announcement. Finally, we show that our results obtain for institutional investors with short-term focus, such as independent advisors, investment companies and insurance companies, but not for institutional investors with long-term focus, such as internally managed pension funds, educational institutions, and private foundations. This result further supports our conclusions regarding informed trading by institutions based on information about forthcoming earnings.

institutional ownership, informed trading, correlated information

Abstract:
This study documents an association between change in institutional ownership during a calendar quarter and abnormal returns at the time of the subsequent announcement of quarterly earnings. The result is driven by the portfolio returns of the extreme deciles of changes in institutional ownership, and within the top (bottom) deciles, the third of the stocks with the most positive (negative) skewness of the distribution of changes in institutional ownership. We also show that our results obtain only for institutional investor types with short-term focus. These results suggest informed trading by institutions based on information about forthcoming earnings.

institutional ownership, informed trading, correlated information

Abstract:
This paper shows that the book-to-market (B/M) effect is greater for stocks with higher idiosyncratic return volatility, higher transaction costs and lower investor sophistication, consistent with the market mispricing explanation for the anomaly. The B/M effect for high volatility stocks exceeds that for the low volatility stocks in 20 of the 22 sample years. Also, volatility exhibits significant incremental power beyond the transaction costs and investor sophistication measures in explaining cross-sectional variation in the B/M effect. These findings are consistent with the Shleifer and Vishny (1997) thesis that risk associated with the volatility of arbitrage returns deters arbitrage activity and is an important reason why the B/M effect exists.

arbitrage risk, book-to-market, mispricing, transaction costs, investor sophistication

Abstract:
This paper shows that the book-to-market (B/M) effect is greater for stocks with higher idiosyncratic return volatility, higher transaction costs and lower investor sophistication, consistent with the market mispricing explanation for the anomaly. The B/M effect for high volatility stocks exceeds that for the low volatility stocks in 20 of the 22 sample years. Also, volatility exhibits significant incremental power beyond the transaction costs and investor sophistication measures in explaining cross-sectional variation in the B/M effect. These findings are consistent with the Shleifer and Vishny (1997) thesis that risk associated with the volatility of arbitrage returns deters arbitrage activity and is an important reason why the B/M effect exists.

arbitrage risk, book-to-market, mispricing, transaction costs, investor sophistication

Abstract:
Industry concentration measures calculated with Compustat data, which cover only the public firms in an industry, are poor proxies of actual industry concentration. These measures have correlations of only 13 percent with the corresponding U.S. Census measures, which are based on all public and private firms in an industry. Also, only when U.S. Census measures are used is there evidence consistent with theoretical predictions that more concentrated industries, which should be more oligopolistic, are populated by larger and fewer firms with higher price-cost margins. Further, the significant relations of Compustat based industry concentration measures with the dependent variables of several important prior studies are not obtained when U.S. Census measures are used. One of the reasons for this occurrence is that Compustat based measures proxy for industry decline. Overall, our results indicate that product markets research that uses Compustat based industry concentration measures may lead to incorrect conclusions.

Abstract:
Industry concentration measures calculated with Compustat data, which cover only the public firms in an industry, are poor proxies of actual industry concentration. These measures have correlations of only 13 percent with the corresponding U.S. Census measures, which are based on all public and private firms in an industry. Also, only when U.S. Census measures are used is there evidence consistent with theoretical predictions that more concentrated industries, which should be more oligopolistic, are populated by larger and fewer firms with higher price-cost margins. Further, the significant relations of Compustat based industry concentration measures with the dependent variables of several important prior studies are not obtained when U.S. Census measures are used. One of the reasons for this occurrence is that Compustat based measures proxy for industry decline. Overall, our results indicate that product markets research that uses Compustat based industry concentration measures may lead to incorrect conclusions.

Industry concentration, product market competition, finance research

Abstract:
Frankel and Lee (1998) show that the value-to-price ratio (Vf/P) predicts future abnormal returns for up to three years, where Vf is an estimate of fundamental value based on a residual income valuation framework operationalized using analyst earnings forecasts. In this study, we examine whether the Vf/P effect is due to market mispricing or omitted risk factors. We find that the Vf/P effect is partially concentrated around the future earnings announcements, consistent with the mispricing explanation. On using an extensive set of risk proxies, suggested by Gebhardt et al. (2001) and Gode and Mohanram (2001), we also find that Vf/P is significantly related to some risk proxies. However, after controlling for these risk factors, Vf/P continues to exhibit a significant positive association with future returns suggesting that these risk factors are not responsible for the Vf/P effect. Overall, the results seem consistent with the mispricing explanation for the Vf/P effect.

Residual income valuation, mispricing, risk

Abstract:
This paper examines whether corporate selective disclosure is a reason for the well-known forecast dispersion anomaly - the negative relation between analyst forecast dispersion and future stock returns. Prior studies have shown that firms tend to disclose good news in a timely manner and delay the disclosure of bad news. Prior studies have also shown that less corporate disclosure causes analysts to rely more on their private sources of information, causing greater dispersion in analysts’ forecasts. Accordingly, we predict that firms with higher dispersion in analysts’ earnings forecasts are more likely to experience poor earnings in subsequent quarters, and find evidence consistent with this prediction. After controlling for the relation between forecast dispersion and future earnings, we find that forecast dispersion is no longer negatively related to future stock returns. This result suggests that firms’ tendency to withhold bad news causes the market to temporarily overvalue stocks until the bad news is publicly released.

Abstract:
Using data on both fund stockholdings and fund returns, we show that actively-managed equity mutual funds are able to make significant excess returns net of actual transaction costs from trading on the accruals anomaly. We find that the top 10% of mutual funds that most actively follow the accruals strategy have Fama-French 3-factor alphas of 2.83% per year. We also find that mutual funds more active in using the accruals strategy exhibit higher return volatility and higher flow volatility. These factors may represent the adverse consequences of arbitrage risk that funds face when they trade on the accruals anomaly (Shleifer & Vishny 1997).

accruals anomaly, mutual fund, arbitrage risk

Abstract:
The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act (PSLRA) increases restrictions on private litigation for securities fraud. We examine stock price reactions on legislative-event-related days of firms in four high-litigation-risk industries. Two other studies on this issue, Spiess and Tkac (1997) (ST) and Johnson et al. (2001) (JKN), conclude that shareholders considered PSLRA beneficial. While we find largely similar daily abnormal returns for event-related days that they examine, we present evidence that the timing of multiple confounding events makes the interpretation of these daily returns ambiguous. Results from additional analyses beyond those conducted by ST and JKN (market price reversal tests, analysis of additional legislative-event-related days, cumulative abnormal returns over the legislative period, and analysis of other events affecting investors' ability to bring securities-related lawsuits), are largely inconsistent with their interpretation, suggesting instead that shareholders in the four high-litigation-risk industries react negatively on average to PSLRA's restrictions on their ability to bring securities-related lawsuits.

Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995; Proposition 211 on the 1996 California state ballot; Aiding and abetting of securities fraud; Shareholders

Abstract:
The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act (PSLRA) increases restrictions on private litigation for securities fraud. We examine stock price reactions on legislative-event-related days of firms in four high-litigation-risk industries. Two other studies on this issue, Spiess and Tkac (1997) (ST) and Johnson et al. (2001) (JKN), conclude that shareholders considered PSLRA beneficial. While we find largely similar daily abnormal returns for event-related days that they examine, we present evidence that the timing of multiple confounding events makes the interpretation of these daily returns ambiguous. Results from additional analyses beyond those conducted by ST and JKN (market price reversal tests, analysis of additional legislative-event-related days, cumulative abnormal returns over the legislative period, and analysis of other events affecting investors' ability to bring securities-related lawsuits), are largely inconsistent with their interpretation, suggesting instead that shareholders in the four high-litigation-risk industries react negatively on average to PSLRA's restrictions on their ability to bring securities-related lawsuits.

Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, Proposition 211 on the 1996 California state ballot, aiding and abetting of securities fraud, shareholders

Abstract:
We provide evidence on the prediction that because in more concentrated industries firms have more interdependent investment strategies with rivals, incumbents in such industries prefer less informative disclosure policies to avoid providing competitors with strategically useful information. Supporting this prediction, we find that firms in more concentrated industries provide less frequent management earnings forecasts, are less likely to make long-term forecasts, receive lower disclosure ratings from analysts, and have more opaque information environments. Also, when such firms raise funds they prefer private placements, which have minimal SEC-mandated disclosure requirements, over seasoned equity offerings. Likewise, when these firms engage in takeovers they get around having to disclose significant details about their acquisitions by acquiring private targets. Finally, we document that our results are more pronounced in younger industries in which proprietary costs from disclosure are likely to be greater and less pronounced in industries with higher leverage in which product market competition is expected to be ‘softer’. Overall, our findings suggest that firms’ attempts to avoid providing rivals with strategically valuable information impacts corporate disclosure policy and other major corporate financial policy decisions.

Abstract:
Several recent studies have reached mixed conclusions on whether investors can profitably exploit the post earnings announcement drift (PEAD). A common feature of these studies is that they are based on hypothetical trading strategies and estimated trading costs. This study uses portfolio holdings and returns of mutual funds to examine whether sophisticated investors trade on PEAD and whether they profit from it. We show that actively-managed US equity mutual funds on average trade on the anomaly. Further, top 10% of the funds that most actively trade on the anomaly do so persistently, adapt their portfolios to reduce transaction costs, and profit from their trading - net of actual transaction costs, their before-expense net return is 1.97 percent per year higher than that of a group of funds not actively trading on the strategy, and 1.56 percent higher than that of funds with similar size, book-to-market and momentum investment styles. Superior performance of these funds cannot be explained by an extensive set of fund skill measures documented in other studies. Funds more actively trading on PEAD also tend to be less diversified and experience substantially higher return volatility and flow volatility, which may prevent funds from exploiting PEAD more aggressively and cause the PEAD strategy to remain profitable net of transactions costs. Nevertheless, we find that the subset of funds most actively trading on PEAD serve as marginal investors whose trades reduce PEAD related mispricing in the stock market.

post earnings announcement drift, mutual funds, market efficiency, transaction costs

Abstract:
On December 19, 1995, President Clinton vetoed the Private Securities Litigation Reform Bill because he disapproved of certain provisions in the bill, which restrict the ability of private litigants to sue for securities fraud. This study shows that the stock price reaction to the veto is positively correlated with proxies for probability of a firm being sued, namely, market model beta and membership in high technology industries. It further shows that the stock price reaction to the veto reverses when Congress overrides the veto. This evidence suggests that the shareholders of firms with high litigation risk approved of the veto. We consider several reasons for the stock price reaction to the veto and conclude the following: the shareholders' primary concern was that the restrictions to sue proposed in the bill would reduce the deterrence effect of securities litigation and weaken the financial disclosure system.

Abstract:
Utama and Cready (1997) use total institutional ownership to proxy for the proportion of better-informed traders, an important determinant of trading around earnings announcements. We argue that institutions holding small stakes cannot justify the fixed cost of developing private predisclosure information. Also, institutions with large stakes generally do not trade around earnings announcements since they are dedicated investors or face regulations that make informed trading difficult. However, institutions holding medium stakes have incentives to develop private predisclosure information and trade on it; we show that their ownership is a finer proxy for the proportion of better-informed traders at earnings announcements.

institutional investors, informed traders, trading volume

Abstract:
This study examines the effect of investor sentiment on the accruals anomaly. We find that for small stocks mispricing per unit of accruals is greater in high sentiment periods as compared to low sentiment periods. This result is consistent with the notion that in high sentiment periods individual investors pay less attention towards understanding the accruals and cash flow components of earnings. This effect is observed primarily for small stocks because these stocks are more likely to be followed by individual investors, who tend to have limited attention. We also find that for small stocks reported accruals are greater during high sentiment periods as compared to low sentiment periods, suggesting that managers exploit the greater overvaluation per unit of accruals during high sentiment periods.

Accruals, Mispricing, Investor Sentiment, Accruals Management

Abstract:
This paper shows that firms near a broad credit rating change, that is, a rating with a plus or minus specification, tend to inflate their reported earnings more than firms that are not near a broad credit rating change. Our measures of earnings inflation are discretionary accruals and conservatism in reported earnings. Our results are consistent with the notion that due to regulatory and contractual factors related to broad ratings (Kisgen [2006]), firms benefit (lose) more from an upgrade (downgrade) to a higher (lower) broad rating category as compared to an upgrade (downgrade) within a broad rating category. Our results also suggest that firms believe that by inflating earnings they can influence credit rating agencies' decision to upgrade or downgrade.

broad credit rating change, earnings management, credit rating agencies

Abstract:
For firms conducting initial or seasoned equity offerings, recent studies document that their stock returns are lower than those of non-issuers for about five years following the issue, and this underperformance is greater for small issuers. This study shows that analysts' earnings forecasts have greater optimistic bias for issuers than for non-issuers during the five year period. Moreover, the incremental optimistic bias is greater for small issuers. This result is consistent with the Loughran and Ritter (1995) conjecture that one of the reasons for the long-run underperformance of issuers' stocks is optimistic bias in the market's expectations of these firms' earnings.

Abstract:
Prior studies document that firms with an increase in research and development (R&D) expenditures experience positive abnormal returns for up to five years. The reason for this association is unclear, however. This result may reflect an unidentified R&D correlated risk factor and/or it may reflect a systematic underestimation by market participants of future benefits from current R&D increases. We document that future abnormal returns to R&D increases are concentrated around subsequent earnings announcements. We further show that that the market underestimates the association between R&D increases and future earnings. Finally, we document that in their forecasts of future earnings security analysts also underestimate the effect of R&D increases. These results suggest that future abnormal returns following R&D increases are at least in part due to the market's underestimation of the earnings benefits of R&D increases.

Abstract:
This study documents an association between change in institutional ownership during a calendar quarter and abnormal returns at the time of the subsequent announcement of quarterly earnings. The result is driven by the portfolio returns of the extreme deciles of changes in institutional ownership, and within the top (bottom) deciles, the third of the stocks with the most positive (negative) skewness of the distribution of changes in institutional ownership. We also show that our results obtain only for institutional investor types with short-term focus. These results suggest informed trading by institutions based on information about forthcoming earnings.

institutional ownership, informed trading, correlated information

Abstract:
Kim and Verrecchia (1991a) propose that volume reaction to a public announcement is proportional to the product of absolute price change at the announcement and a measure of differential precision of predisclosure information across traders. We use ownership by institutions with medium stakes (between 1 to 5 percent of outstanding shares) as a measure of differential information precision, given that these institutional investors, as compared to other institutional and individual investors, are likely to have more precise predisclosure information and are more likely to trade at earnings announcements based on their belief revision about stock value. We examine this proposition in the context of earnings announcements and obtain results consistent with the theory. Tests of the theory by prior studies have yielded somewhat inconclusive results.

Abstract:
Industry concentration measures calculated with Compustat data, which cover only the public firms in an industry, are poor proxies for actual industry concentration. These measures have correlations of only 13% with the corresponding U.S. Census measures, which are based on all public and private firms in an industry. Also, only when U.S. Census measures are used is there evidence consistent with theoretical predictions that more-concentrated industries, which should be more oligopolistic, are populated by larger and fewer firms with higher price-cost margins. Further, the significant relations of Compustat-based industry concentration measures with the dependent variables of several important prior studies are not obtained when U.S. Census measures are used. One of the reasons for this occurrence is that Compustat-based measures proxy for industry decline. Overall, our results indicate that product markets research that uses Compustat-based industry concentration measures may lead to incorrect conclusions.

G10, G30, L10

Abstract:
Frankel and Lee (1998) show that the value-to-price ratio (Vf/P) predicts future abnormal returns for up to three years, where Vf is an estimate of fundamental value based on a residual income valuation framework operationalized using analyst earnings forecasts. In this study, we examine whether the Vf/P effect is due to market mispricing or omitted risk factors. We find that the Vf/P effect is partially concentrated around the future earnings announcements, consistent with the mispricing explanation. On using an extensive set of risk proxies, suggested by Gebhardt et al. (2001) and Gode and Mohanram (2001), we also find that Vf/P is significantly related to some risk proxies. However, after controlling for these risk factors, Vf/P continues to exhibit a significant positive association with future returns suggesting that these risk factors are not responsible for the Vf/P effect. Overall, the results seem consistent with the mispricing explanation for the Vf/P effect.

residual income valuation, mispricing, risk

Abstract:
This study documents that change in institutional ownership of a company during a calendar quarter is associated with abnormal returns at the time of subsequent announcements of quarterly earnings. This result suggests informed trading by institutions based on superior information about forthcoming earnings. The study also shows that the association is observed primarily for firms with low book to market value of equity and high levels of R&D activity, measures of unrecorded intangible assets. These results are consistent with such firms being good candidates for productive information search and interpretation by institutional investors because accounting numbers of such firms provide relatively less value-relevant information.

Institutional trading, earnings accouncements, selective disclosure

Abstract:
This paper investigates the incremental information content of three accounting performance measures for U.K. firms: earnings, funds flow and cash flow. Based on tests of association using the most general specifications suggested by the recent literature incorporating time-varying parameters and a non-linearity in response coefficients, a pattern of consistent results emerges. All three performance measures have explanatory power for returns individually and the response coefficients on their unexpected components are positive. The results further show that earnings, funds flow and cash flow all have incremental information content.However, the response coefficients on the unexpected components are consistently positive across years only for earnings and funds flow.

incremental information content, earnings, funds flow, cash flow

Abstract:
This paper investigates the incremental information content of three accounting performance measures for U.K. firms: earnings, funds flow and cash flow. Based on tests of association using the most general specifications suggested by the recent literature incorporating time-varying parameters and a non-linearity in response coefficients, a pattern of consistent results emerges. All three performance measures have explanatory power for returns individually and the response coefficients on their unexpected components are positive. The results further show that earnings, funds flow and cash flow all have incremental information content.However, the response coefficients on the unexpected components are consistently positive across years only for earnings and funds flow.