Daniel W. Collins

Firm size and the information content of prices with respect to earnings

Abstract Beaver, Lambert and Morse (1980) suggest that prices may be useful in forecasting future earnings. We explore the information content of prices with respect to earnings by focusing on firm size and its relation to the predictive accuracy of price-based earnings forecasts. Firm size proxies for the amount of information and for the number of traders and professional analysts processing the available information about an enterprise. Our empirical results are consistent with the hypothesis that price-based earnings will outperform univariate time series forecasts by a greater margin for larger firms than for smaller firms.

Investor Sophistication and the Mispricing of Accruals

This paper examines the role of institutional investors in the pricing of accruals. Using Bushee;s (1998) classification of institutional investors, we show that firms with a high level of institutional ownership and a minimum threshold level of active institutional traders have stock prices that more accurately reflect the persistence of accruals. This result holds after controlling for differences in the persistence of accruals between firms with high and low institutional ownership, and after controlling for other characteristics that are correlated with institutional ownership and future returns. Additionally, firms with low institutional ownership are smaller, less profitable, and have lower share turnover, suggesting that limits to arbitrage impede institutional investors from exploiting the seemingly large abnormal returns for these firms.

Some Further Evidence on the Stochastic Properties of Systematic Risk

Although there is consensus in the finance literature that the beta risk of equity securities is stochastic, there is considerable disagreement as to whether the var iation is purely random or exhibits autocorrelation through time. To investigate this issue, the authors employ a model that allows beta t o exhibit both random and autoregressive behavior simultaneously. The y test this model against alternative specifications on a large sampl e of individual securities and randomly formed portfolios comprising 10, 50, and 100 securities. Results are also presented for portfolios formed according to firm size. Copyright 1987 by the University of Chicago.

THE PROPOSED ELIMINATION OF FULL COST ACCOUNTING IN THE EXTRACTIVE PETROLEUM INDUSTRY An Empirical Assessment of the Market Consequences

Abstract On July 15, 1977, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) issued an Exposure Draft of Statement 19 in which a proposal was set forth to establish the uniform usage of successful efforts accounting and to eliminate full cost accounting in the extractive petroleum industry. This study addresses the question of whether the proposed elimination of full cost accounting had an adverse effect on the security returns of full cost versus successful efforts firms. The evidence presented in this study suggests that the proposal to eliminate full cost accounting was associated with a significant negative difference in risk-adjusted rates between full cost firms and successful efforts firms whose financial reports remained unaffected by the proposed change. This observed difference was found to be sustained over an eight month period including confirming events and disclosures associated with the initial proposal. We do not attribute this difference to market inefficiencies but, rather, to the anticipated consequences which this mandated accounting change is likely to have on managerial behavior and to increased costs that will have to be borne by the affected companies.

The Effect of IAS/IFRS Adoption on Earnings Management (Smoothing): A Closer Look at Competing Explanations

Prior research provides mixed evidence on whether the transition to IAS/IFRS deters or contributes to greater earnings management (earnings smoothing). The dominant explanation for the conflicting results is self-selection. Early voluntary adopters had incentives to increase the transparency of their reporting in order to attract outside capital, and, therefore, earnings management (smoothing) went down after adoption, while those firms that waited until IFRS adoption became mandatory in EU countries lacked incentives for transparent reporting leading to increases in earnings management (smoothing) after IFRS adoption. We argue that IAS/IFRS standards changed substantially from the early voluntary adoption period to the mandatory adoption year (2005). Compared to earlier IAS/IFRS standards and many countries’ domestic GAAP standards, we maintain that the IFRS standards that went into effect in 2005 provide greater flexibility of accounting choices because of vague criteria, overt and covert options, and subjective estimates that are allowed under these principle-based standards. We argue that this greater flexibility coupled with the lack of clear guidance on how to implement these new standards has led to greater earnings management (smoothing). Consistent with this view, we find an increase in earnings management (smoothing) from pre-2005 to post-2005 for Early Adopters and Late Adopters in countries that allowed early IAS/IFRS adoption, and for Mandatory Adopters in countries that did not allow early IFRS adoption. Our major findings hold after eliminating firms more likely to have mechanically-induced increases in earnings smoothing properties as a result of IFRS adoption and across countries with and without concurrent improvements in enforcement of accounting standards. We also find that firms from countries with less (more) local GAAP flexibility exhibit greater (less) evidence of increases in earnings smoothing following mandatory adoption of IFRS standards in 2005. Collectively, our results suggest that the increased flexibility of new IAS/IFRS standards and lack of clear guidance in implementing these standards are major factors that explain earnings management (smoothing) changes around IFRS adoption.

Financial Statement Comparability and the Efficiency of Acquisition Decisions

This study examines whether acquirers make better acquisition decisions when target firms’ financial statements exhibit greater comparability with industry peer firms. We predict and find that acquirers’ make more profitable acquisition decisions when targets’ financial statements are more comparable—as evidenced by higher merger announcement returns, higher acquisition synergies, and better future operating performance. We also find that post-acquisition goodwill impairments and post-acquisition divestitures are less likely when target firms’ financial statements are more comparable. Finally, we find the effect of targets’ comparability is more pronounced when acquirers’ ex-ante information asymmetry is higher and when acquisitions are accomplished via tender offers to target shareholders. In total, our evidence suggests targets’ financial statement comparability helps acquirers make better acquisitioninvestment decisions and fosters more efficient capital allocation. We thank Ted Goodman (FARS discussant), Dan Wangerin (AAA discussant), workshop participants at the 2013 AAA Annual Meeting, the 2014 FARS Midyear Meeting, the 2013 BYU Accounting Research Symposium, the University of Iowa, Duke University, University of Minnesota Research Conference and Penn State University for their helpful comments and suggestions. We also thank the University of Texas at Austin Capital Markets Readings Group for their helpful comments and suggestions. Finally, we thank Rodrigo Verdi for providing the SAS program for comparability measures. The authors acknowledge funding from the Tippie College of Business and Naveen Jindal School of Management.

Accounting Comparability and Corporate Innovative Efficiency

We predict that a firm’s greater accounting comparability with its industry peers facilitates its learning from those peer firms’ research and development (R&D) investments, allowing that firm to have greater innovative efficiency. We estimate accounting comparability using pro-forma capitalized R&D earnings that link lagged R&D expenditures to future profitability employing the Almon (1965) distributed lag model. We find that greater accounting comparability leads to enhanced ability to predict future cash flows generated by R&D investments of peer firms. In the cross-section, we observe the relation between accounting comparability and innovative efficiency is stronger if peer firms exhibit higher accounting (accrual) quality and are themselves successful innovators. In sum, this study shows that a shared qualitative characteristic of accounting, namely accounting comparability, is positively associated with innovative efficiency. JEL classifications: G12, G14, O32

The Effects of IFRS Adoption on Observed Earnings Smoothness Properties: The Confounding Effects of Changes in Timely Gain and Loss Recognition

Ball and Shivakumar [(2006), The role of accruals in asymmetrically timely gain and loss recognition. Journal of Accounting Research, 44, 207–242] show that the observed smoothness of earnings (i.e. negative contemporaneous correlation between accruals and cash flows) is the joint product of the role of accruals in smoothing out transitory fluctuations in operating cash flows (noise reduction role) and the role of accruals in providing timely recognition of economic gains and losses (contracting role). These two roles of accruals have opposite effects on earnings smoothness properties. Using a regression framework that allows us to simultaneously consider both roles, we show that failing to control for changes in timely gain and loss recognition as firms shift to IFRS can lead to erroneous inferences regarding the effects of IFRS adoption on earnings smoothness, and consequently on researcher’ conclusions about how IFRS adoption has affected accounting quality. Our results are consistent with mandatory (2005) IFRS adoption resulting in a change in the contracting role rather than the noise reduction role (or smoothness role) of accruals. A decrease in timely loss recognition, an increase in timely gain recognition, and a net decrease in asymmetric timely loss recognition are what drives the change in observed smoothness properties of earnings around mandatory IFRS adoption.

The Persistence and Pricing of Merger-Related Transitory Growth and Its Implications for Growth Anomalies and Asset Pricing Models

When firms engage in mergers and acquisitions, nominal growth rates in assets or sales determined from adjacent year consolidated financial statements yield upward biased growth rate estimates because of merger-related transitory growth when the combination is accounted for under the purchase method. Similarly, estimates of accruals based on using changes in working capital accounts from successive balance sheets are upward biased in these situations. The constant entity growth (CEG) rate is measured as the year-to-year growth in financial statement items that represent the same economic entity (parent and subsidiary) at two points in time. We characterize the difference between nominal and constant entity growth of consolidated entities that engage in mergers and acquisitions as artificial growth. We further decompose CEG into systemic (organic) growth and total markup growth, which results from the stepped up basis of the subsidiary’s recorded assets plus recognized goodwill. We show that artificial asset growth and total markup growth, which are transitory growth components, comprise nearly all of the conventionally measured nominal asset growth for firms engaged in M&A activity. Moreover, we find that roughly 28 percent of Compustat/CRSP firm-years are affected by a merger or acquisition during our 1991-2008 sample period. Our findings suggest that artificial asset growth is mispriced and represents a significant portion of the asset growth mispricing that has been widely documented in the finance literature. We also investigate the impact of merger-related transitory growth on two competing explanations for the accrual anomaly: the growth explanation and the overvaluation explanation. We find that accrual mispricing based on balance sheet measures of accruals persists after controlling for the separate effects of artificial and total markup growth mispricing and for the effects of overvaluation on future returns.