THE SEC OVERRULING OF SFAS 19 AND THE BEHAVIOR OF SECURITY RETURNS

Abstract

In August 1978, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced its intention to employ Reserve Recognition Accounting, and also issued Accounting Series Release No. 253 which in substance overruled Statement of Financial Accounting Standards No. 19 (SFAS 19), “Financial Accounting and Reporting by Oil and Gas Producing Companies.” There are relatively few cases where accounting promulgations have been reversed, and these cases merit careful analysis. Accordingly, this research employs an identical methodology and sample of an earlier study (Benjamin and McEnroe, 1981) in order to ascertain the security market effect of the SEC's overruling of SFAS 19. The a priori expectation would be that the SEC intervention should cause a reversal of any security market effects found in the prior study.