Search results

This study investigates the efficiency of value relevance and faithful representation when stock market price derivates from its firm value to the investigated IT companies listed in FTSE Taiwan 50. The empirical investigation reveals one financial indicators: Return on equity (ROE) has explanatory ability among seven financial indicators, earnings per share (EPS), book value (BV), dividend yield (Div.), price–earnings ratio (P/E), ROE, return on assets (ROA), and return on operating asset (ROOA) to both sampled companies, United Microelectronics Corporation, UMC, (2303) and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited, TSMC, (2330). Furthermore, the empirical results indicate that the higher order moments, skewness and kurtosis, of price deviation do not provide a reliable prediction or explanatory power for stock price trends.

The purpose of this study is to provide a harmonisation framework for the diverse accounting practices by extractive industries.

The study takes a three-stage approach. The first involves a comprehensive literature review of the historical evolution of accounting regulations by extractive industries. The second involves constructing an accounting practice index for extractive industries. The third involves constructing a harmonisation framework.

The accounting practice index provides empirical evidence of the wide diversity of accounting practices by extractive industries. Analysis of the literature review addresses the several attempts by accounting and regulatory bodies to standardise the diverse practices of accounting by extractive industries and reasons for the lack of successful standardisations. The authors extract lessons from these previous attempts and propose a harmonisation framework.

The proposed harmonisation framework can be used to align together the diverse accounting practices by extractive industries and enhance comparability and consistency of accounting figures and statements produced by these industries. Harmonising the diverse accounting practices is crucial for investment decision-making.

The harmonisation framework is the first of its kind that could enhance the comparability of accounts of extractive industries’ firms and be used to harmonise diverse accounting practices by other industries.

This study aims to contribute to the debate on goodwill accounting by examining the information content of impairment losses recognized in half-yearly reports. Half-yearly reports provide a suitable context to examine the effectiveness of the impairment process. Due to IFRIC 10 requirements, indeed, managers may have incentives to avoid recognizing impairment losses at the interim reporting date.

The study adopts an archival approach. Based on the traditional Ohlson’s model (1995), it explores the information content of half-yearly impairment losses in the European context over the period 2007–2017.

Findings confirm the relevance of half-yearly reports and suggest that half-yearly impairment losses are significantly associated with stock prices. In particular, investors positively value companies that recognized goodwill impairment losses at the interim reporting date.

The study contributes to the academic debate on goodwill and the effectiveness of the impairment procedure. In particular, it provides empirical evidence on the recognition of goodwill write-offs when it is possible to avoid the impairment test in the absence of indications of impairment.

Findings of this study can support the current debate on accounting for goodwill also in the light of the recent proposals of the IASB on the need to improve the effectiveness of the impairment test.

This study provides original empirical evidence on the goodwill impairment test in half-yearly reports, extending previous research that typically examines this issue in annual reports.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether information asymmetry mediates the relationship between disclosure and cost of equity.

The study is based on a sample of 500 companies listed in Bombay Stock Exchange for a period of six years from 2015 to 2021. Panel data regression is applied to analyze the relationship between voluntary disclosure, cost of equity and information asymmetry. Mediation effect of information asymmetry is tested with the help of Barron and Kenny’s (1986) approach.

Findings suggest that in case of Indian companies, disclosure reduces cost of equity directly and indirectly through mediation of information asymmetry. Indian investors value credible information for better estimation of future returns, supporting the validity of estimation risk and stock market liquidity hypothesis, which proposes an inverse relationship between disclosure and cost of equity.

Managers can use the findings to strategize their disclosure policy and secure funds at lower cost. Shareholders can monitor managerial actions by demanding credible disclosures. Government too can encourage voluntary disclosure by providing special incentives to the firms.

This study is a pioneering research that investigates the mediating influence of information asymmetry between disclosure and cost of equity with reference to the Indian corporate landscape.

This chapter presents both main arguments of dividend policy theories and their empirical evidence. According to Miller and Modigliani (1961), dividend decisions are not relevant to firm value in a perfect capital market. Nevertheless, there are several market frictions in the real world (e.g., information asymmetry, agency problems, transaction costs, firm maturity, catering incentives and taxes). Therefore, academics use them to develop theories which help them explain corporate dividend decisions. Particularly, signaling theory considers dividend payments as a signal about firms' future prospects since outside investors face information disadvantage. “Bird-in-hand” theory argues that investors prefer dividends to capital gains since the former have lower risk than the latter. Agency theory is developed from the conflict of interest between corporate managers and shareholders. Corporate managers have high incentives to restrict dividend payments. Furthermore, transaction cost theory and pecking order theory posit that firms prefer internal to external funds. This drives firms to hold more cash and pay less dividends. Life cycle theory explains dividend policy by firm maturity. Mature firms have fewer investment opportunities, and thus, they tend to pay more dividends. Catering theory states that dividend decisions are based on investors' demand. Firms pay more dividends since investors prefer dividends and assign higher value to dividend payers. Tax clientele theory argues that firms that have corporate dividend policy rely on the comparative income tax rates for dividends and capital gains. Under the tax discriminations against dividends, firms tend to restrict their dividends in order to increase their stock prices.

This paper provides a structural model to value startup companies and determine the optimal level of research and development (R&D) spending by these companies.

This paper describes a new variant of float-the-money options, which can act as a financial instrument for financing R&D expenses for a specific time horizon or development stage, allowing the investor to share in the startup's value appreciation over that duration. Another innovation of this paper is that it develops a structural model for evaluating optimal level of R&D spending over a given time horizon. The paper deploys the Gompertz-Cox model for the R&D project outcomes, which facilitates investigation of how increased level of R&D input can enhance the company's value growth.

The author first introduces a time-varying drift term into standard Black-Scholes model to account for the varying growth rates of the startup at different stages, and the author interprets venture capital's investment in the startup as a “float-the-money” option. The author then incorporates the probabilities of startup failures at multiple stages into their financial valuation. The author gets a closed-form pricing formula for the contingent option of value appreciation. Finally, the author utilizes Cox proportional hazards model to analyze the optimal level of R&D input that maximizes the return on investment.

The integrated contingent claims model links the change in the financial valuation of startups with the incremental R&D spending. The Gompertz-Cox contingency model for R&D success rate is used to quantify the optimal level of R&D input. This model assumption may be simplistic, but nevertheless illustrative.

Once supplemented with actual transaction data, the model can serve as a reference benchmark valuation of new project deals and previously invested projects seeking exit.

The integrated structural model can potentially have much wider applications beyond valuation of startup companies. For instance, in valuing a company's risk management, the level of R&D spending in the model can be replaced by the company's budget for risk management. As another promising application, in evaluating a country's economic growth rate in the face of rising climate risks, the level of R&D spending in this paper can be replaced by a country's investment in addressing climate risks.

This paper is the first to develop an integrated valuation model for startups by combining the real-world R&D project contingencies with risk-neutral valuation of the potential payoffs.

This study aims to contribute to the emerging debate about materiality with novel insights about the signaling effects related to the disclosure of environmental, social and governance (ESG) information using the guidelines released by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB).

An empirical assessment using panel data analysis was built to evaluate the relationship between sustainability reporting standards and analysts’ forecast accuracy.

The analysis revealed that the proliferation of sustainability reports prepared on mandatory or voluntary basis mitigated the signaling effects related to the disclosure of ESG information by companies. Furthermore, the additional analysis conducted considering sustainability reporting quality and ESG performance revealed the existence of mixed effects on analysts’ forecasts accuracy. Therefore, the insights highlighted the need to consider a cautionary approach in evaluating the contribution of ESG data to financial evaluations.

The practical implications consist of identifying criticisms related to disclosing ESG information by listed companies. In detail, the analysis underlines the need to enhance reporting standards’ interoperability to support the development of more accurate analysis by investors and financial experts.

The analysis reveals increasing attention investors pay to socially responsible initiatives, confirming that financial markets consider sustainability reporting as a strategic driver to engage with stakeholders and investors.

This research represents one of the first attempts to explore differences between GRI and SASB using an empirical approach.

In the present study, using a novel fractional logit model, the link between R&D (Research & Development) investment and shareholder value-based CEO (Chief Executive Officer) compensation has been examined within the non-financial sector in the Euro area economies using a firm-level dataset for 2002–2019.

The fractional logit model is utilized to examine the effects of corporate payment on R&D investment. The fractional logit model can be considered the empirical approach that takes into account R&D non-performer firms to avoid reducing the sample size. The fractional logit model is superior to the censored or truncated models, like Tobit, since the fractional logit model is useful to address the econometric limitations that are found in the censored and truncated models in the non-linear models.

The findings obtained in this study showed a significant and negative effect of short-term aim-based CEO payment on R&D expenditures in the Euro area economies using firm-level data. These findings are robust to different robustness checks and modeling alternatives.

To the author's knowledge, there is no study that examines the effects of short-term shareholder value maximization-based CEO compensation on R&D in the European context in the literature.

The purpose of this study is to identify the norms that underlie and condition the decisions made by preparers of financial reports.

This interview-based study illustrates how financial report preparers engage in behaviors linked to the perception of recognition and measurement of internally generated intangible assets by important stakeholders. All of the companies included in the study adhere to International Financial Reporting Standards when creating their consolidated financial statements. The participants selected for the study are involved in accounting decisions related to research and development in accordance with International Accounting Standard (IAS) 38.

The authors identify the normative assumptions underlying the recognition and measurement of internally generated intangibles, which are based on concerns of consistency, credibility and reasonableness. The authors find that the normative basis for legitimacy in financial accounting is primarily related to cognitive legitimacy and is not of a moral or pragmatic nature.

The study reveals that recognition and measurement of internally generated intangibles in financial accounting relate to legitimacy. The authors identify specific norms that form the basis of this legitimacy, namely, consistency, credibility and reasonableness. These identified norms serve as constraints, mitigating the risk of judgment misuse within the IAS 38 framework for earnings management.