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In this paper, we aim to answer two questions. First, whether firms manipulate reported earnings via pension assumptions when facing mandatory contributions. Second, whether firms alter their earnings management behavior when the Financial Accounting Standard Board (FASB) mandates disclosure of pension asset composition and a description of investment strategy under SFAS 132R.

Our basic approach is to run linear regressions of firm-year assumed returns on the log of pension sensitivity measures, controlling for current and lagged actual returns from pension assets, fiscal year dummies and industry dummies. The larger the pension sensitivity ratios, the stronger the effects from inflated ERRs on reported earnings. We confirm the early results that the regression slopes are positive and highly significant. We construct an indicator variable DMC to capture the mandatory contributions firms face and another indicator variable D132R to capture the effect of SFAS 132R. DMC takes the value of one for fiscal years during which an acquisition takes place and zero otherwise. D132R takes the value of one for fiscal years after December 15, 2003 and zero otherwise.

Our sample covers the period from June 1992 to December 2017. Our key results are as follows. The estimated coefficient (t-statistic) on DMC is 0.308 (6.87). Firms facing mandatory contributions tend to set ERRs at an average 0.308% higher. The estimated coefficient (t-statistic) on D132R is −2.190 (−13.70). The new disclosure requirement under SFAS 132R constrains all firms to set ERRs at an average 2.190% lower. The estimate (t-statistic) on the interactive term DMA×D132R is −0.237 (−3.29). When mandatory contributions happen during the post-SFAS 132R period, firms tend to set ERRs at 0.237% lower than they would do otherwise in the pre-SFAS 132R period.

When firms face mandatory contributions, typically firm experience negative stock market returns. We examine whether managers manage earnings to mitigate such negative impact. We find that firms inflate assumed returns on pension assets to boost their reported earnings when facing mandatory contributions. We also find that managers alter earnings management behavior, in the case of mandatory contributions, following the introduction of new pension disclosure standards under SFAS 132R that become effective on December 15, 2003. Under the new SFAS 132R requirement, firms need to disclose asset allocation and describe investment strategies. This imposes restrictions on managers' discretion in making ERR assumptions, since now the composition of pension assets is a key determinant of the assumed expected rate of return on pension assets. Firms need to justify their ERRs with their asset allocations.

This paper aims to provide evidence of an unintended observable consequence of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) adoption by examining opportunistic use of earnings management through revenue as well as expense items classification shifting in the year of transition.

To document classification shifting, the authors take advantage of the Korean mandatory IFRS adoption in 2011, when broad discretion was given to publicly traded companies’ managers to present operating profits.

It is found that companies strategically use both revenues and expenses to manage core earnings at the time of transition by shifting other income as a common tactic to improve their operating performance and special expenses just to meet or beat earnings targets.

Given the concerns of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) about classification shifting behavior and the debate over whether the SEC should mandate the use of IFRS for US companies, the findings of this study are timely and contribute to authors’ understanding of the unintended consequences of mandatory IFRS adoption.

Using intraday prices for the S&P 500 and Nikkei Stock Average stock indexes and aggregate trading volume for the New York and Tokyo Stock Exchanges, we show how short-run comovements between national stock market returns vary over time in a way related to the trading volume and liquidity in those markets. We frame our analysis in the context of the heterogeneous-agent models of trading developed by Campbell, Grossman and Wang (1993) and Blume, Easley and O’Hara (1994) and Wang (1994) which predict that trading volume acts as a signal of the information content of a given price move. While we find that there exists significant short-run dependence in returns and volatility between Japan and the U.S., we offer new evidence that these return “spillovers” are sensitive to interactions with trading volume in those markets. The cross-market effects with volume are revealed in both close-to-open and open-to-close returns and often exhibit non-linear patterns that are not predicted by theory.

The purpose of this article is to revisit the mean reversion in profitability and earnings among Indian-listed firms, based on the idea that changes in profitability and earnings are somewhat predictable.

The study used a sample of 445 Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE)-listed companies and 309 companies from the manufacturing sector in India for the period from 2007 to 2020. The study employed cross-sectional regressions. Both linear and non-linear Partial Adjustment Models (PAM) were used to forecast profitability and earnings.

The study revealed that profitability and earnings mean revert for both the BSE-listed companies and the manufacturing sector companies from 2007 to 2012. However, for the years from 2013 to 2020, it was found that there is no significant evidence of mean reversion in both the BSE-listed companies or the manufacturing sector companies.

The findings have larger implications for security analysts who forecast future stabilisation or recovery of historically high or low growth rates. Investors and analysts would benefit from having a better understanding of how competitive attacks affect profitability as well as how the overall economic growth of a country affects earnings and valuations.

Most of the empirical research in India has focused on mean reversion in stock prices or stock returns. The present study looked at the mean reversion of profitability and earnings in Indian firms.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the proposition that unexplained price and volume movements detected by the New Zealand Exchange's (“NZX”) surveillance staff reflect speculative trading.

The paper examines a sample of 98 price queries issued by the NZX between 1996 and 2004 where the company responded with a “no news” announcement to the NZX query. The sample is partitioned between queries of price increases and queries of price decreases. A market model is employed to estimate abnormal returns over the event window period [−30, 30] where day 0 is the date the price query is issued.

The paper finds evidence of large abnormal returns in the immediate pre‐query period but only a partial reversal in the post‐query period following the “no news” announcements.

The absence of a full reversal of the pre‐query abnormal return is interpreted as evidence that prices are being set by informed traders rather than by uninformed or speculative traders. Further research is required to determine whether this reflects breaches of either the continuous disclosure regime or insider trading regulations.

The paper presents the first systematic analysis of the NZX's price query system. The empirical results show that price movements that generate price queries and subsequent “no news” announcements should not be dismissed as mere speculation.

Investors are now able to analyse more noise-free news to inform their trading decisions than ever before. Their expectation that more information means better performance is not supported by previous psychological experiments which argue that too much information actually impairs performance. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the degree of information explicitness improves stock market performance.

An experiment is conducted in a computer laboratory to examine a trading simulation manipulated from a real market-shock. Participants’ performance efficiency and effectiveness are measured separately.

The results indicate that the explicitness of information neither improves nor impairs participants’ performance effectiveness from the perspectives of returns, share and cash positions, and trading volumes. However, participants’ performance efficiency is significantly affected by information explicitness.

The novel approach and findings of this research add to the knowledge of the impact of information explicitness on the quality of decision making in a financial market environment.

The purpose of this paper is to study the effects of short‐sale constraints and differences of opinions on the price premium of dual listed Chinese A‐H shares.

The analysis mainly follows the Miller's model, which indicates that the relaxation of stringent short‐sale constraint could reduce the upward bias in stock prices. Following the literature, the paper uses the idiosyncratic return volatility and monthly turnover rate as two main proxies of differences of opinions.

This study shows that the high level of A‐share differences of opinions will lead to the high price premium of A‐share portfolio with the short‐sale constraint in the A‐share market. However, the high level of H‐share differences of opinions has no effect on the price premium of H‐share portfolio and has also positively contributed to the A‐share price premium. The price premium of shorted A‐share portfolio is declined more significantly than those of non‐shorted ones after the relaxation of short‐sale constraint in the A‐share market.

The findings in this study provide further evidence that dual listed Chinese A‐shares with high level of differences of opinions and short‐sale constraints tend to be overvalued.

This study supports Miller's hypothesis that with the control of short‐sale constraint, the high level of differences of opinions could lead to the high degree of overvaluation of A‐share portfolio. The market capitalization and book‐to‐market ratio of A‐shares also generate significant positive effect to the A‐share price premium. Finally, the introduction of short‐sale mechanism in A‐share market could partially eliminate the mispricing of dual‐listed A‐shares and improve the price efficiency of A‐share market.

This study is mainly focused on the joint effects of differences of opinions and short‐sale constraints on the A‐share price premium. The new short‐sale policy in A‐share market in March 2010 provides us an opportunity to study the effect of relaxation of stringent short‐sale constraint on the A‐share price premium. In the literatures so far, all studies assumed A‐shares are strictly prohibited to be sold short.

The aim of this study is to examine the structural relationship between Spector’s nine job satisfaction facets (supervision, nature of the work, communication, contingent rewards, co-worker, fringe benefits, payment, promotion and operating procedures), organizational commitment facets (normative commitment, affective commitment and continuance commitment) and the influence of employees’ years of experience on satisfaction and commitment relationships. Owing to the nature of the industry, employee satisfaction, retention and commitment in Information and Communications Technology-Small and Medium-sized Enterprise (ICT-SME) is a matter of great concern.

A total of 256 valid questionnaires were collected among employees of Information and Communications Technology-Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (ICT-SMEs) to evaluate the measurement and structural model using partial least squares path modelling approach.

The findings indicate that payment, promotion, fringe benefits, co-worker, communication, operating procedures and nature of the work are positively associated with affective commitment. Furthermore, payment, promotion, fringe benefits, supervision, contingent rewards, operating procedures and nature of the work have a positive relationship with normative commitment. Considering employees’ years of experience as a categorical moderating variable, the results of partial least squares multi-group analysis show how the discrepancies between employees’ years of experience influence their level of commitment.

This study reveals that employees’ affective and normative commitments are positively associated and their continuance commitment is contingent upon their affective commitment, and not normative commitment. There are only three factors, i.e. promotion, fringe benefits and operating procedures, that are conductive to employees’ continuance commitment. Contributions, implications and limitations of the study are discussed.