George E. Batta

The Direct Relevance of Accounting Information for Credit Default Swap Pricing

This paper examines the direct relevance of accounting information for credit default swap (CDS) pricing. Prior research on the impact of accounting information for CDS pricing has neglected to include either the output of theoretical CDS pricing models or credit ratings, both of which should impound credit relevant accounting information. Both in- and out-of-sample testing results suggest that accounting information’s explanatory power for CDS prices is significantly diminished when this additional information is included in regression models. Empirical findings suggest a larger indirect role for accounting information in pricing CDS’, which play an important role in credit risk price discovery.

Credit Derivatives and Analyst Behavior

This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the role of credit default swaps (CDS) in information production surrounding earnings announcements. First, we demonstrate that the strength of CDS price discovery prior to earnings announcements is related to the presence of private information and the illiquidity of the underlying corporate bonds, consistent with the CDS market being a preferred venue for informed trading. Next, we ask how the information revealed through CDS trading influences the output of equity and credit rating analysts. We find that post-CDS trading, the dispersion and error of earnings-per-share forecasts are generally reduced, and downgrades by both types of analysts become more frequent and more timely before large negative earnings surprises, suggesting that the CDS market conveys information valuable to financial analysts.

The impact of equity misvaluation on predictive accuracy of Bankruptcy models

This article examines the impact of equity misvaluation on the predictive accuracy of bankruptcy models. The authors find that structural bankruptcy prediction models are not affected by misvaluation. For hazard models, however, forecasting accuracy for properly valued firms is greater than for misvalued firms, and model forecasting accuracy improves significantly if model coefficients vary with misvaluation. The results show the importance of taking stock market misvaluation into account when forecasting bankruptcies using hazard models.

Political Connections and Accounting Quality Under High Expropriation Risk

Abstract We examine the impact of political connections and accounting quality among Venezuelan industrial firms, which face one of the highest levels of expropriation risk worldwide. Based on prior literature, we expect a negative relationship between expropriation risk and accounting quality as firms manage earnings to avoid ‘benign’ state intervention. We find that politically connected firms have higher accounting quality than non-connected firms, which is consistent with connected firms’ lower risk of expropriation due to connections with high-level government officials or ruling party members. The relationship between accounting quality and political connections appears to be strongly moderated by institutional features like expropriation risk.

Disclosure-Derived Financial Statement Adjustments in Equity Valuation

In this paper, we assess the equity value relevance of disclosure-derived financial statement adjustments. In price levels and returns tests, we find that reported financial numbers have relatively superior explanatory power over adjusted numbers. Only when adjustments are included along with reported numbers in pricing regressions do adjustments retain significant explanatory power. Our results suggest that for summary valuation inputs like operating profitability, assets, and liabilities, analysts should not substitute adjusted numbers for reported numbers; rather, the information in a subset of adjustments should be used along with reported numbers to produce more accurate valuations.

Credit Derivatives and Firm Investment

We examine the effect of credit default swap (CDS) trading on firm investment, finding a post-CDS introduction decrease in debt issuance and acquisitions, which remains robust to propensity score matching, instrumenting CDS introduction, and controlling for past investment and financing activities. Further analysis reveals a CDS introduction-year increase in debt financing and acquisitions, for which we could not eliminate reverse causality as a potential explanation. Overall, the ex post increase in bankruptcy risk and debt overhang likely plays a dominant role in the investment effect of CDS, while the expansion in credit supply due to a reduction of strategic default or regulatory capital requirement appears less important.