Is business strategy a priced fundamental-broad information risk factor?

Stock Liquidity, Board Gender Diversity, National Culture, and Default Risk around the Globe

Accrual Quality and Expected Returns: The Importance of Controlling for Cash Flow Shocks

This paper develops a simple methodology based on the earnings response coefficient framework that allows decomposing realized returns into cash flow shocks and returns excluding cash flow shocks. I find that stocks with poor (good) accrual quality were on average subject to relatively lower (higher) cash flow shocks over the past 37 years. These lower (higher) cash flow shocks offset the higher (lower) expected returns of poor (good) accrual quality firms. After excluding cash flow shocks, future realized returns are negatively associated with accrual quality. The premiums pertaining to accrual quality are both statistically and economically significant in standard asset-pricing tests when cash flow shocks are excluded by firm-specific return decomposition. Overall, this paper provides evidence on the existence of a priced accrual quality risk factor, and underscores the importance of controlling for cash flow shocks in asset-pricing tests that use realized returns.

Geography, business strategy and accruals-based earnings management

Abstract: Recent theoretical work argues that information risk is a non‐diversifiable risk factor that is priced in the capital market. Using accruals quality to proxy for information risk, Francis et al. (2005) provide empirical support for this argument using a sample of US firms. This paper re‐examines the interplay of accruals quality, information risk and cost of capital in Australia, where a number of important institutional and regulatory differences are hypothesized to affect the relation between accruals quality and cost of capital. The results suggest that, while accruals quality impacts on the cost of capital for Australian firms, some salient differences exist. In contrast to findings for US firms, the costs of debt and equity for Australian firms are largely influenced by accruals quality arising from economic fundamentals (i.e., innate accrual quality) but not discretionary reporting choices (i.e., discretionary accrual quality). This finding is consistent with our predictions based on the Australian institutional and regulatory environment. In addition, using both the asset pricing tests in Francis et al. (2005) and Core et al. (2008), we provide evidence consistent with accruals quality being a priced risk factor.

The accrual information is discussed in light with the multifactor asset pricing theory. It is argued that the capital market processes information efficiently, and that low accruals firms are risky and therefore earn higher average returns. In other words, the level of accruals proxies for the loading on a fundamental risk factor that drives stock returns. The objective of this study is to prove significance influence of accrual information and to evaluate the performance of stock portfolio constructed by Treynor Index, Jensen-Alpha, and Sharpe Index. The final sample are the past and present member of LQ-45 public companies. Following Fama and French (1993), we form a factor-mimicking portfolio that essentially goes long on low accruals firms and short on high accruals firms (Conservative Minus Aggressive, or CMA). Since the portfolio is constructed based upon the return-predicting characteristic itself, it is thereby designed to capture any risk factors that may underly the accrual effect even if the relevant risk factors are not observed directly. The empirical results show that partially, CMA has significant positive (negative) influence on stock portfolio with low (high) level accrual, both for single, two, and three factor models, especially at size-accrual category. Other empiric result addition CMA, indicate increasing explanatory power of model in explaining the variation of expected return of stock portfolio on various asset pricing model. Hereinafter three tools of evaluation measurement result indicate that size, book-to-market ratio yet still not shown optimal performance, even after conducted by extension of all model by adding accrual information factors.

In this thesis, I explore the implications of investor information for asset returns in general equilibrium economies with production. In the first chapter, I study what determines the relationship between information quality and long-run risk in a Cox-Ingersoll-Ross type model with recursive preferences. Building on the recent work by Ai (2010), I separate the risk premium into the short-run and long-run components to highlight aspects of preferences that are important for this relationship. It is shown that the attitude towards temporal resolution of uncertainty determines the direction in which changes in information quality alter the compensation for long-run risk, while the elasticity of intertemporal substitution is important for the amplitude of this effect. In the second chapter, I investigate how incomplete information affects asset returns in a real business cycle model with Epstein-Zin preferences. In the model economy, productivity is altered by both transitory and permanent shocks. The representative agent observes movements in productivity but cannot perfectly distinguish their sources. As a result he must solve a signal extraction problem. This incomplete information model is found to be quantitatively consistent with some common observations about asset prices and aggregate quantities, including, for example, the equity premium, the risk-free rate, the price-dividend ratio and the dynamics of consumption and output. Furthermore, the model generates a downward sloping term structure of equity risk as empirically observed − namely, assets with shortduration of cash flows have larger risk premium and return volatility than assets with long-duration of cash flows.

Accruals quality, stock returns and asset pricing: Evidence from the UK

Purpose: This study reexamines the test on the pricing of accruals quality.Theory suggests that information risk is a priced risk factor.Using accruals quality as the proxy for information risk, researchers have tested the pricing of information risk.The results are inconsistent potentially because of the information shock in the realized returns that are used as the proxy for expected returns.Based on this argument, this study revisits this issue excluding information-shock-free measure of expected returns.Research design, data and methodology: This study estimates expected returns using the vector autoregression model.This method extracts information shocks more thoroughly than the methods in prior studies; therefore, the concern regarding information shock is minimized.As risk premiums are larger in recession periods than in expansion periods, recession and expansion subsamples were used to confirm the robustness of the main findings.For the pricing test, this study uses twostage cross-sectional regression.Results: Empirical results find evidence that accruals quality is a priced risk factor.Furthermore, this study finds that the pricing of accruals quality is observed only in recession periods.Conclusions: This study supports the argument that accruals quality, as well as the pricing of information risk, is a priced risk factor.

There is a growing focus on the need to ensure that the information technology (IT) provision within the organization is aligned with business strategy in order to create value. This has come about partly as a result of evidence that IT does not automatically contribute to the generation of value within organizations and may in fact offer little return on investment or pose a risk. As Chief Information Officers migrate to new positions where they have greater involvement with strategic organizational development and where they are more in the glare of the governance spotlight, they will need to use a broad range of business and technology frameworks and tools. This paper explores this situation and identifies a number of practical tools that can be used by leaders of all parts of an organization as they strive to produce positive and holistic strategic alignment of information technology. We consider the role that various business and IT derived approaches and tools can play in supporting stronger moves towards the strategic alignment of IT with the broader business, and a shared understanding among C-Suite executives.

This study investigates whether accruals quality (AQ) influences the expected returns of stock investors. We employ estimates of the implied cost of equity capital (ICOE) as the expected returns of stock investors because they are well specified ex ante without the need for noisy realized returns. Extending a current debate on AQ pricing, we control for several properties of analysts’ forecasts and find that AQ is positively and significantly related to ICOE. In addition, AQ is more closely related to the innate component than to the discretionary component. However, even after controlling for innate factors, we find that investors also price the discretionary component. Finally, we show that the relationship between AQ and ICOE is more pronounced for firms in poor information environments, such as small firms and firms with a low analyst following, implying that a firm’s information environment influences the relationship between AQ and ICOE.

Purpose – This paper aims to identify the most significant governance provision in enhancing the financial information quality of UK listed firms. In addition, it investigates the influence of this governance provision in explaining stock returns of 20 UK industry portfolios. Design/methodology/approach – To identify the main governance provision in enhancing the accruals quality, the paper runs regressions of accruals quality variable on the total governance variable, on the governance provisions individually, and on the governance provisions taken together with and without integrating control variables. Next, Asset Pricing tests are employed to examine the capacity of the audit provision, as proved the most influential governance provision on accruals quality, to explain stock returns. The quantitative approach used in the paper enables to investigate the relationship between corporate governance, accruals quality, and stock returns. Findings – Results indicate that audit provision is the most important governance mechanism affecting accruals quality. In addition, this mechanism is comparable with the book-to-market factor in explaining the time-series variation in portfolios returns. Furthermore, the introduction of the Audit factor to Fama-French model reduces the significance of the size factor and the book-to-market factor in explaining stock returns. This suggests that size and the book-to-market factors contain information related to the audit provision. Research limitations/implications – The findings of the paper carry implications for investors as they do not need to equally weight all corporate governance provisions in their resource allocation decisions. The significant influence of audit provision on accruals quality needs to be taken into consideration when investment decisions are made. Audit factor is important in predicting future returns. It is also found to be as good as book-to-market factor in explaining portfolios returns. Also, the findings have many implications for regulatory bodies in their efforts to enhance financial information quality. Establishing roles for best governance in reducing information risk should focus, among other things, on the significant elements of corporate governance in improving accruals quality. The main limitation of the study is the restricted variation in the Audit governance factor which comes from the source of corporate governance data, i.e. CGQ. Firms in the sample do not exhibit diversified levels of Audit scores. Accordingly, when constructing audit risk factor it was found that firms could only be split into two portfolios according to their Audit scores instead of five. Originality/value – This study identifies audit provision as the most significant governance mechanism in enhancing the financial information quality of UK listed firms. In addition, a factor representing audit provision is constructed to investigate the influence of this provision on stock returns. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first study that examines the capacity of the audit provision to explain stock returns in an asset pricing framework.

SECURITY PRICES, RISK, AND MAXIMAL GAINS FROM DIVERSIFICATION*

Does the Pricing of Financial Reporting Quality Change Around Dividend Changes?

ABSTRACTWe examine whether accrual earnings quality is a priced information risk factor in a dividend change setting. We define information risk as the probability that firm‐specific financial statement information pertinent to investor pricing decisions is of low precision, and use the factor‐mimicking portfolio returns formed on theDechow‐Dichev [2002]accrual quality (AQ) metric to proxy for the information risk (IR) factor returns. We augment the Fama‐French three‐factor model with this IR factor, and find that dividend initiation and increase firms exhibit a decrease in the factor loadings on the IR factor while dividend decrease firms exhibit an increase in the corresponding factor loadings, but such changes in the factor loadings occur months prior to the dividend change announcements. The results are robust to further controls for operating risk and using an alternative measure of information risk. Further analysis on changes in information characteristics such as AQ, the probability of informed trading score (PIN), forecast dispersion, and return volatility surrounding dividend change events are consistent with the asset pricing results. Overall, we interpret our results as being consistent with investors treating the information risk associated with the precision of financial statement information as a priced risk factor, with both the precision and pricing changing in predictable directions around dividend changes. However, while we attempt to control for operating risk changes in additional tests, we cannot completely rule out changes in operating risk as a competing alternative explanation for our observed results.