Author: Junqi ZouPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Accrual basis accounting
Languages : en
Pages : 105
Book Description
Two Essays in the Accrual Anomaly
Author: Junqi ZouPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Accrual basis accounting
Languages : en
Pages : 105
Book Description
Essays on Financial Anomalies
Author: Ming GuPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Earnings management
Languages : en
Pages : 105
Book Description
This dissertation studies two pervasive financial anomalies: price momentum and accrual anomaly. The first essay establishes a robust link between momentum and accruals (the difference between accounting earnings and cash flow). I find that momentum profitability is statistically significant and economically large only among firms with high accruals. The cross-sectional characteristics of momentum previously documented do not subsume the effect of accruals on momentum profits, and the effect also holds in different market states. To understand the source of momentum, I analyze the predictive power of accruals for stock returns based on two hypotheses: earnings manipulation and earnings overestimation. I find that loser stocks with high accruals experience significant decreases in industry-adjusted sales growth and the largest amount of income-decreasing special items in subsequent years. Most of momentum profitability among high-accrual firms is attributable to the high discretionary accrual group. My findings indicate that, primarily due to the effect of earnings manipulation, the downward payoff of loser stocks with high accruals largely drives the accrual-based momentum profit. The second essay investigates the relationship between financial distress and accrual anomaly. I investigate whether the continued existence of the accrual anomaly is due to the failure to account for the compensation for distress risk. I find a U-shape pattern of distress risks across accrual portfolios. The accrual profit is mostly concentrated in firms with high distress, suggesting that the abnormal returns to the accrual trading strategy may result from the high distress-risk exposures. Market frictions such as idiosyncratic stock return volatility, illiquidity, and short-sale constraints do not generate the accrual anomaly, but they prevent stock prices from adjusting once financial distress triggers the abnormal returns to the accrual trading strategy.
An Essay on "accrual Anomaly"
Author: Guohua JiangEssays on the Accounting Accrual Anomaly
Author: Fei ZouThe Impact of the Financial Press on Accrual Anomaly and Earnings Management
Author: Pyung Kyung KangPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Accrual basis accounting
Languages : en
Pages : 92
Book Description
This dissertation consists of two essays investigating the impact of news released in the financial press on accrual anomaly and earnings management. Sloan (1996) shows earnings announcements to be information events driving the correction process of the mispricing of accruals. The first essay focuses on news released in the financial press as an additional driver of the correction process. Using 83,016 Wall Street Journal news articles from 1993 to 2006, I find that in addition to earnings announcements, news in the financial press also reveals valuable information for the correction of accruals mispricing. Prior studies have documented that the existence of information asymmetry between managers and shareholders creates an information environment conducive to earnings management. In the second essay, I investigate the impact of news coverage on earnings management by classifying news articles into two distinct types of news: earnings-related News (EN) and non-earnings-related news (NEN). Based on 48,972 news items reported in the Wall Street Journal and 32,177 firm-years for firms traded on the NYSE/AMEX/NASDAQ between 1994 and 2004 fiscal-years, I find that NEN is positively related to the degree of information asymmetry, whereas EN is negatively related. More importantly, I find that NEN, which increases information asymmetry, is positively associated with earnings management, while EN, which reduces information asymmetry, is negatively associated. The results also show that these associations of NEN and EN with earnings management are more profound for firms engaging in income-increasing earnings management and for large-size firms. This dissertation improves the understanding of the role of financial press as an information intermediary in capital markets.
Essays on the Accounting Accruals Anomaly
Author: Fei ZouAccrual Persistence and Accrual Anomaly
Author: Xiumin MartinPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Accrual basis accounting
Languages : en
Pages :
Book Description
The first essay, "Inter-temporal accrual persistence and accrual anomaly" investigates whether accrual persistence and accrual anomaly vary with the state of economy. Prior accounting research argues that diminishing marginal returns on new investments drive lower persistence of accruals relative to cash flows. Macroeconomic research documents that marginal profitability is counter-cyclical, which implies that diminishing marginal returns on new investments are more pronounced during periods of expansions than recessions. Linking the cyclicality of diminishing returns on investments with the argument that diminishing returns to investments contribute to lower persistence of accruals relative to cash flows, this paper predicts that the differential persistence of accruals is greater during expansionary periods than recessionary periods. Using a U.S. sample from 1972 to 2003, I find that the differential persistence of accruals is greater during economic expansions than recessions. When I focus on the components of accruals, I find that depreciation, change in accounts receivable, change in raw materials, and change in finished goods are the main drivers of cyclical differential accrual persistence. These findings are robust to alternative conditioning sets, estimation procedures, and measures of the business cycle. I also find that investors are unable to assess the cyclical differential persistence of accruals, leading to higher returns (both raw and abnormal returns) from an accrual-based trading strategy during expansionary periods. The second essay "Can cyclical property of accrual persistence explain the accrual anomaly?" examines whether cyclical accrual persistence documented in the first essay can provide an explanation to accrual anomaly based on consumption based assets pricing theory. Specifically, I posit that accruals decrease in consumption risk because of cyclical property of accrual persistence (i.e., accruals are less persistent during economic expansions than during recessions). The implication is that the observed abnormal returns from accrual-trading strategy represent compensation for the underlying consumption risk. Using a U.S. sample from 1972 to 2003, I find that consumption risk decreases in the level of accruals. I also show that after controlling for other known risk factors, pricing kernel (a proxy for the state of economy) can explain about 11 percent of abnormal returns from accrual-based trading strategy. These findings are robust to alternative conditioning set and estimation procedures.
Inside the Accrual Anomaly
Author: Tzachi ZachPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Accrual basis accounting
Languages : en
Pages : 117
Book Description
Two Essays on Asset Pricing Anomalies
Author: Che Kuan ChenPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business
Languages : en
Pages :
Book Description
This dissertation investigates the impact of mutual funds in the cross-sectional stock returns and examines a conflict in the existing literature that characterizes momentum. In the first essay, I examine the explanatory power of aggregate mutual fund flows for the profitability of price-based (i.e., momentum and 52-week high) and non-price-based (i.e., earnings surprises, profitability, share issuance, accrual and asset growth) anomalies in the cross-section of returns. I find that the flow-based trading of mutual funds contributes to mispricing as measured by the profits to price-based anomalies, especially at times when market-wide funding costs are high. The effect also exists for non-price-based anomalies, but only through the dependence of their profits on momentum. My findings support the view of Lou (2012) and Vayanos and Woolley (2013) that mutual funds’ trading on flows creates feedback that strengthens price-based anomalies, as high-performing funds buy additional shares of high-performing stocks and poorly performing funds sell shares of poorly performing stocks. However, the explanatory power of aggregate mutual fund flows for price-based anomaly returns is only partly attenuated by fund-level variables designed to capture the feedback effect. The flow-induced trading by mutual funds appears to contribute to mispricing for reasons beyond the feedback effect. The second essay examines the extent to which momentum profits depend on the state of credit markets. The state of credit markets does affect momentum, but the results are not consistent with a credit channel effect on momentum. For non-financial firms, the momentum profits are stronger among portfolios formed under favorable credit conditions. For financial firms, credit conditions do not matter to the momentum profits. Price continuations in financial firms are related to whether the firms are performing poorly, but not whether that performance is attributable to credit conditions that are favorable or poor.
Two Accrual Anomalies
Author: Qiang KangPublisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 46
Book Description
Motivated by the findings that the aggregate (discretionary) accruals positively predicts one-year-ahead firm-level stock returns and that there is a considerable amount of co-movement in firm-level (discretionary) accruals, we decompose firm-level (discretionary) accruals into a market-wide component and a firm-specific component. We document robust evidence that the two orthogonal (discretionary) accrual components affect stock returns in qualitatively opposite ways - while the firm-specific component negatively predicts next-period stock returns, firms with a higher level of market-wide component have on average higher next-period stock returns. Moreover, the two accrual-return relations co-exist and the accrual anomaly due to the firm-specific component of (discretionary) accruals largely supersedes the conventional accrual anomaly documented in Sloan (1996) and Xie (2001). Furthermore, a hedge strategy explicitly exploiting the two accrual anomalies yields a significantly higher return than that of a typical accrual strategy built only on firm-level (discretionary) accruals. Our analysis shows that accounting information such as (discretionary) accruals affects the stock market through both market-wide and firm-specific channels. We briefly discuss potential economic rationales behind each of the two accrual anomalies.