Corporate social responsibility disclosure and market valuation: evidence from Spanish listed firms

Using a sample of listed Spanish companies pertaining to the IBEX35 index for the period 2007–2011, this paper examines whether those firms with higher CSR disclosure ratings are more valued by market participants. This study also complements the literature addressing the value relevance of CSR disclosure by further analyzing not only the direct effects of CSR reporting on stock prices but also its indirect effects through its interaction with main accounting variables (i.e., earnings and book value of equity). CSR reports can also affect stock price indirectly because the sustainability report may be perceived by investors to be a source of further and complementary information regarding the nature, composition and trends of the traditional value-relevant accounting variables. Finally, this study also analyzes whether CSR disclosure by firms operating in environmentally-sensitive industries is assessed differently by market participants than CSR disclosure by companies operating in other industries. By using a modified Ohlson (Contemp Account Res 1:661–687, 1995) model, it is found that CSR disclosure do have both a direct and indirect effect on stock prices by modifying the value-relevance of earnings and book value of equity. Moreover, CSR disclosure by companies operating in environmentally-sensitive industries is associated with higher market valuations than CSR disclosure by companies operating in nonsensitive industries. This may be due to the fact that CSR disclosures provide information that allow investors to make better assessments of the increased risk related to potential litigation and future environmental liabilities, thereby reducing information asymmetries and the risk of adverse selection.     

资产减值准备计提与会计盈余价值相关性——基于亏损上市公司的经验数据

采用多元回归分析法对新8项资产减值会计准则实施后,亏损上市公司计提减值准备的会计盈余价值相关性进行了研究;在考虑公司个体特点的基础上,运用堆栈回归法,采用随机效应影响的面板模型对不同年度的会计盈余价值相关性进行了分析。结果表明,从整体上看,亏损上市公司计提减值准备后增强了会计盈余价值相关性,计提的减值准备数据本身也具有增量价值相关性,同时,研究还发现盈利年度的会计信息对投资者的决策更有用,以及投资者不能有效识别微利公司的会计盈余质量,而对于巨亏公司与通过转回减值准备方式盈利的公司来说,其会计盈余数据的决策相关性显著低于对比公司,投资者能有效识别其会计盈余质量,这为2007年1月1日起实施的《企业会计准则第8号——资产减值》中规定的关于已计提的减值准备不可转回的会计准则变革提供了实证支持。     

New Evidence on the Impact of Legal Status on Immigrant Labor Market Performance: The Spanish Case

Using a recent and rich Spanish data set on immigrants, we examine the impact of legal status on two measures of labor market performance: the likelihood of being employed and earnings. The Spanish case is of special interest given the rapid increase in immigration over the past 15 years and the large number of amnesties granted during the 1990s and 2000s. We find that a 10 per cent increase in the share of legal immigrants would raise the overall employment likelihood of immigrants by 4 percentage points and their earnings by 3.3 per cent. The results, which prove robust to alternative sample specifications, confirm the well‐known importance of being legal for the economic assimilation of immigrants.     

A COMMENT ON THE COST OF NEW ISSUES OF COMMON STOCK

According to the constant growth model and perceived finance theory, the cost of new external equity exceeds the cost of retained earnings due to flotation costs and underpricing. Carlson and Dietz [1] have recently argued that the constant growth model is operationally inadequate whenever the net proceeds from the issuance of a new share differ from book value. Specifically, they contend that the cost of new external equity is less than the cost of retained earnings whenever the net proceeds from a new share exceed book value. We show that these conclusions stem from an error in interpretation and therefore that the constant growth model is valid regardless of the relationship between market prices and book value.     

USING SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS TO EVALUATE MATERIALITY*

A large body of the published research in financial accounting provides strong and persuasive evidence on the association between accounting numbers and stock prices but falls short of drawing any implications about accounting policies on measurements or on reporting. Attempting to go beyond association the author of this paper provides an application of a possible methodology for evaluating materiality of accounting measurements in a given decision situation. The methodology employs discriminant analysis in which the sensitivity of the discriminating model to the changes in mean earnings per share provides a decisions reaction scale and shows that a change in mean earnings per share equal to or less than 10% does not significantly affect the prediction. The validity of the results would depend on the correspondence between this model and the behavior of decision-makers. However, in situations such as the one chosen here, in which an investor's decision-making process cannot be normatively structured, appropriate statistical methods effectively can be utilized to describe the process.     

政府行为、股权安排与公司治理的有效性——基于盈余质量视角的研究

本文以我国2000至2005年期间A股上市公司为研究对象,探讨在政府控制的特殊经济环境下,股权安排对会计盈余质量的影响,试图从会计契约角度对公司治理有效性做出新的诠析。本研究发现,控股股东对盈余质量的影响是非线性的,而第二大股东则对控股股东的壕沟防御效应起到有效的遏制作用。研究还发现,在政府行政干预力度加大和内部人利益侵害行为加剧的双重推动下,国有上市公司财务报告质量将进一步被降低。     

管理层股权激励与企业未来盈余定价——来自中国资本市场的证据

本文探讨管理层股权激励对企业未来盈余定价的影响,并进一步将企业未来盈余分解为行业成分和公司特质成分,考察股权激励对不同成分未来盈余定价的影响,以及不同模式股权激励对上述关系影响的差异。利用实施股权激励的中国A股上市公司2006-2016年间的数据,本文发现：（1）股权激励提高了当期股票收益率与企业未来盈余的相关性。说明管理层股权激励有助于投资者对企业未来盈余定价;（2）管理层股权激励并不影响投资者对行业成分未来盈余定价,但会加速投资者对公司特质未来盈余定价;（3）管理层的股票型激励有助于投资者对企业未来盈余定价,同时也能加速投资者对公司特质未来盈余定价,但股票期权激励并无上述作用。研究结果意味着,整体而言股权激励能够缓解管理层与股东之间信息披露的代理问题,激励管理层向外部投资者披露更多高质量的公司基本面信息,从而降低投资者对公司特质未来盈余信息的搜寻成本,最终通过加速公司特质未来盈余信息融入股价来促进投资者对企业未来盈余定价。本文揭示了管理层股权激励促进投资者对企业未来盈余定价的微观机制,同时,研究结论对提高中国证券市场的信息效率提供了重要的理论参考。     

Overstated Quarterly Earnings and Analysts' Earnings Forecast Revisions*

A primary purpose of accounting is to provide information for decision makers. Accounting misstatements may have a detrimental effect on decision making. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) identifies earnings overstatements as being particularly troublesome to users, as indicated by SEC Accounting and Auditing Enforcement Releases' emphasis on earnings' overstatement errors. This research investigates how security analysts' forecast revisions are affected by accounting earnings overstatement errors, which become known only after the analysts released their revised annual earnings forecasts. The paper investigates the clarifying role that additional information plays in analysts' revisions. The results show that analysts draw significantly different conclusions from earnings containing (unknown) overstatement errors than from accurately reported earnings. In essence, the analysts identify some of the overstatement, at least on average, by making an adjustment that effectively ignores 21 percent of the overstatement error.     

长期资产减值、盈余管理与价值相关性——基于新会计准则变化的实证研究

2006年2月15日财政部颁布了新的《企业会计准则》,引起了人们广泛的关注,准则中要求长期资产减值准备一经计提就不能转回,这与IASB和FASB对资产减值的规定明显不同。本文就是基于这样的背景,研究按照新会计准则提供的资产减值的信息是否增强了会计信息的价值相关性,一经计提就不能转回的规定是否能有效抑制上市公司的盈余管理行为。文章采用多元线性回归分析以及成对样本非参数检验的方法,对上述问题进行实证分析。研究结果表明,在新会计准则的规定下,上市公司计提的长期减值准备本身具有增量价值相关性,并且新准则实施以后上市公司计提的长期资产减值准备的价值相关性显著高于执行旧会计准则的年度。同时,新准则实施以后上市公司计提短期资产减值准备的盈余管理动机强于长期资产减值准备。这为2007年1月1日起实施的新会计准则中关于已计提的长期资产减值准备不可转回的变革提供了实证支持。     

Is stock price a good measure for assessing value-relevance of earnings? An empirical test

Recently, a growing body of literature has created a widespread impression that financial statements have lost their value-relevance because of a shift from traditional capital-intensive economy into a high technology, service-oriented economy. In particular, the claim is that financial statements are less relevant in assessing the fundamental value of high technology, service-oriented firms/activities, which are by nature knowledge-intensive. These conclusions are based on past studies that examine the association between accounting numbers (i.e., earnings and book values) and stock prices and show that, in general, the association between accounting information and stock prices has been declining, over time. These findings have been interpreted to be the result of a decline in value relevance of accounting. We examine the predictive content of stock prices and accounting information, as against the contemporaneous association between accounting information and stock prices. We find that while both the predictive content of earnings and prices declined over time, the predictive content of price signals declined by even more. Our analysis suggests that the declining association could be the consequence of increased noise in stock prices over time resulting from increases in trading volume driven by non-information based trades, and not just a decline in the predictive content of earnings. More importantly, this conclusion is consistent with the insights of the noisy rational expectations equilibrium framework analysis, i.e. that increased noise has caused the predictive content of prices to degrade over time. Overall, our evidence suggests that stock prices may not be an appropriate benchmark for gauging the information content of accounting earnings.

应计质量的风险定价研究——来自中国A股市场的证据

以2002年～2008年575家A股上市公司为样本,分别运用固定效应和时间序列OLS回归方法,从股价(年报后)和股票回报率两个角度考察A股上市公司应计盈余质量是否会影响投资者对股票的定价。通过将每股盈余分离成每股可控盈余、非可控盈余和经营现金流后发现,年报之后的股票价格与可控盈余之间呈高度正相关。研究结果表明,投资者不能有效识别上市公司财务报表的真实性,盈余管理在一定程度上影响了投资者对股票的客观定价。进一步,通过构建盈余质量的替代变量AQfactor,将其纳入CAPM模型和三因子模型中进行资产定价检验。结果显示,AQfactor虽然与股票回报率正相关,但并不具有统计意义上的显著性,即在中国A股市场上,没有证据表明应计盈余质量可以作为一个信息风险定价因子来解释股票回报;在相对较长而稳定的期间里,超常的报告盈余引起的应计盈余波动并不能给投资者带来稳定回报率。     

Shortcomings in the Measurement of Innovation: Implications for Accounting Standard Setting

Innovation is nowadays a fundamental determinant of value creation in business companies and economic growth. Therefore, the measurement of innovation has become a significant concern both for business companies and governments. Traditionally, attempts to measure innovation have adopted a macroeconomic approach, as they have been largely based on broad surveys. However, no attempt has been made to date in order to complement the information provided by such surveys with aggregated data obtained from the financial reports of individual companies. This paper analyses the conceptual and methodological problems underlying the measurement of business innovation by means of surveys and discusses the lack of ability of accounting standards to accurately reflect innovative activities in the financial statements of business firms.In the light of the evidence provided by the empirical studies published to date, we analyse the Spanish situation by reviewing innovation studies conducted by the National Institute of Statistics (INE), and assessing the relationship between the value relevance of accounting information and the firm's technological level. Our results suggest that both, micro- and macroeconomic approaches towards the measurement of innovation have significant shortcomings. Thus, a joint effort seems to be needed in order to overcome the methodological limitations affecting innovation studies based on surveys and those relying on financial accounting information. Despite their limitations, surveys provide a sound basis for the identification of trends, key factors and explanatory variables. On the other hand, financial statements could provide a sound basis for the measurement of innovation if they included more relevant information on the intangible determinants of the value of companies. This has obvious implications for the standard setting process.     

The learning organization and its dimensions as key factors in firms' performance

Managerial responses to the Dimensions of the Learning Organization Questionnaire^© together with both perceptual and objective measures of firms' financial performance were analysed. Multiple regression equations were developed to examine the relationship between overall learning organization score and the performance variables return on investment (ROI), return on equity (ROE), earnings per share (EPS), net income per employee and percentage of sales from new products. The results of the study suggest that there is a positive relationship between learning organization behaviours and business performance.     

会计准则改革、股票流动性与权益资本成本——来自中国A股上市公司的经验证据

新会计准则体系的颁布实施作为我国近期的一项重大会计改革,它给资本市场带来了怎样的经济后果,这是准则制定者和使用者普遍关注的问题。本文以中国A股上市公司为样本,首次对会计准则改革的资本市场效果进行了全面的实证检验。经验证据显示会计准则改革显著增强了股票流动性、降低了上市公司的权益资本成本,进而提高了企业价值。本文的结论丰富了现有文献,对我国会计准则的理论建设和实务发展具有一定的应用价值。     

政府补贴、成长性和亏损公司定价

本文以Ohlson模型考察2002-2007年A股亏损公司定价问题。针对亏损公司盈余与权益价值负相关这一异常现象,我们通过将政府补贴、成长性、研发支出和负债融资信息引入定价模型,发现政府补贴、成长性和负债因素能够有效改善模型,消除了盈余与权益价值显著负相关的异常现象,改善了定价模型的效果。通过从规模和净利润两个维度对亏损公司的进一步分类,我们发现从净利润维度来看,政府向那些更容易通过非经常项目扭亏的公司提供了更多财政补贴,并且政府补贴与净利润为正公司的权益价值显著负相关,与净利润为负公司的权益价值不存在显著相关关系;从规模维度来看,上述现象在小公司样本更加明显。     

Evidence on the Superiority of Analysts Quarterly Earnings Forecasts for Small Capitalization Firms*

Financial analysts provide information to support investment analysis and decisions for an ever increasing number of firms. As part of their services they also produce earnings forecasts for covered firms. While there has been much research investigating the determinants of financial analyst earnings forecast superiority for large, widely-followed firms, little research has focused on smaller firms. Until recently, these smaller firms have been largely ignored. This study focuses exclusively on small firms and provides evidence of differing behavior for such firms compared to results previously reported for large firms. Errors in quarterly earnings per share forecasts of small firms obtained from a univariate time-series model are also examined. Regression results indicate that time-series model parameters possess information content with respect to forecast accuracy for analyst-covered firms only. These results are obtained after controlling for firm size, model adequacy, and industry, quarter, and year effects. This suggests that analysts are more likely to cover small firms for which they are able to decipher information correlated with that impounded in the “shocks” in the quarterly earnings time series as captured by the time-series model parameters.     

收益公布效应的实证研究

股票市场的有效性研究是金融经济学的一个重要基础 .国外对此作了广泛深入的研究 ,其中事件研究方法是一个重要的方法 ,其普遍适应性导致了它的广泛应用 .目前对我国股票市场有效性的实证研究尚处于起步阶段 ,本文试图采用事件研究方法主要针对上海股市进行收益公布的实证研究 .本文研究的经验结果对我国股市的半强式有效性提供了一个重要支持     

The Phenomenology of Earnings Management within the Confines of Agency Theory

Agents' selective and acceptable reporting of economic events by different accounting systems, compounded by alternative accounting methods and estimates, make financial statements an approximation of economic reality. The tendency to delay accounting recognition of some transactions suggests that financial statements lag behind reality. The difference between reality and imaginary is often referred to as the agency problem. An essential characteristic of this problem is risk attitudes of principals (shareholders) and agents (management). Shareholders are considered risk neutral in their preferences for individual firms. They are in a position to diversify their shareholdings across multiple firms. Agents on the other hand have security and income that are inextricably linked to one firm. It would not be surprising to find agents exhibiting risk aversion in decisions regarding the firm. Immediately one's attention is drawn to the opportunity costs that arise for the risk-neutral shareholders who prefer that agents maximize their returns. The risk differential between agents and principals creates a problem in principal-agent relationship. It is within this framework that supervisory and incentive alignment mechanisms that alter the risk orientation of agents are set up. Powerful incentives act upon agents as they exercise their judgment, particularly when the judgment can trigger a stock market response that will, in turn, affect the firm in numerous ways. The responsibility of agents is to manage earnings. From a principal's perspective not all of the methods used to achieve this goal are equally desirable. Agents can either increase productivity or they can strategically manipulate accounting choices to affect earnings. The latter method need not come with any associated changes in productivity. Consequently, there is misstatement of the financial results and position. The calculus of earnings management is considered within the confines of agents' treatment of risk. Using an Agency Theory framework, this study examines the techniques used by agents to manage and manipulate earnings. The study initially tests the hypothesis whether earnings are really managed. For this purpose two manipulation indices were developed and based upon these indices the phenomenology earnings management was considered.     

COMPARING FORECAST ACCURACY FOR EXPONENTIAL SMOOTHING MODELS OF EARNINGS-PER-SHARE DATA FOR FINANCIAL DECISION MAKING

This paper relates recent research in predicting accounting earnings per share (EPS) to an experiment comparing the performance of extrapolative forecasting models. The paper points out the usefulness of the results to decision-making processes such as those used in portfolio analysis or financial management. The statistical results of the experiment point to the usefulness of the Holt-Winter (HW) model in predicting EPS for a random sample of firms over a 20-year horizon. For short-term forecasting, the HW model provides relatively accurate forecasts in comparison to other methods used. HW is likely to be a costeffective alternative to more time-consuming and expensive techniques.     

中国证券市场审计任期与盈余质量关系的实证检验

安然事件以来,审计任期与盈余(经审计的)质量的关系成为了研究热点.本文运用中国证券市场1998-2004年上市公司的公开数据,同时从事务所任期与合伙人任期两大层面实证检验了审计任期与盈余质量之间的关系.实证结果显示:随着会计师事务所审计任期的增加,盈余质量显著地表现出先逐渐上升后逐渐下降的倒U型趋势,且拐点稳定在6-8年之间;而随着签字注册会计师审计任期的增加,盈余质量虽然总体逐渐上升,但此趋势尚不足够显著.