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- Information environment euality andidiosyncratic return volatility: evidence from UKPublication . Pereira, Cláudia; Cerqueira, AntónioThis paper examines the cross-section relation-ship between the quality of a firm’s information environment and idiosyncratic return volatility, for a sample of UK firms listed on the London Stock Exchange. Using panel data, we find that poor accruals quality is statistically associated with higher firm-specific return volatility. This association also holds for other measures used for the quality of the information environment: dispersion in analysts’ forecasts, the innate component of accruals quality, which reflects the uncertainty about the nature of the firm’s business and the discretionary component of accruals quality, which is related to managerial discretionary choices. More specifically, we find that adding the dispersion in analysts’ forecasts increases the explanatory power for idiosyncratic volatility of the remaining measures of the quality of the information environment. Our results are consistent with the noise-based approach of idiosyncratic volatility. These findings are likely to contribute to the debate on whether idiosyncratic return volatility captures more firm-specific information being impounded into stock prices or essentially reflects noise.
- Does idiosyncratic return volatility capture information or noise?Publication . Pereira, Cláudia; Cerqueira, AntónioThis paper examines the association between earnings management and firm-specific return volatility for a sample of firms listed on the London Stock Exchange. Identifying the determinants of idiosyncratic volatility has been a topical issue since the Campbell et al. (2001) study which documents a noticeable increase in average firm-level volatility across time. Using panel data, we find that poor information environments resulting from earnings management is associated with higher firm-specific return volatility. This finding is consistent with the noise-based approach of firm-specific return volatility. In addition we provide empirical evidence that such association gets stronger when combining accruals quality and the dispersion in analysts’ forecast to describe a poor information environment. These findings are likely to contribute to the debate on whether firm-specific return volatility captures more firm-specific information being impounded in stock prices or essentially reflects noise.
- Does earnings management affect idiosyncratic volatilityPublication . Pereira, Cláudia; Cerqueira, AntónioThis paper examines the association between earnings management and firm-specific return volatility for a sample of firms listed on the London Stock Exchange. Identifying the determinants of idiosyncratic volatility has been a topical issue since the Campbell et al. (2001) study which documents a noticeable increase in average firm-level volatility across time. Using panel data, we find that poor information environments resulting from earnings management is associated with higher firm-specific return volatility. This finding is consistent with the noise-based approach of firm-specific return volatility. In addition we provide empirical evidence that such association gets stronger when combining accruals quality and the dispersion in analysts’ forecast to describe a poor information environment. Furthermore, we find that poor information environment, leverage and the intensity of information disclosure tend to increase idiosyncratic return volatility, while older, more profitable and larger firms tend exhibit lower levels of idiosyncratic volatility. These results are likely to contribute to the debate on whether firm-specific return volatility captures more firm-specific information being impounded in stock prices or essentially reflects noise.
- The effect of economic conditions on accounting conservatism under IFRS in EuropePublication . Cerqueira, António; Pereira, CláudiaWe analyse in detail conservative accounting practices in seventeen European countries, taking into account institutional factors. In addition, we examine the impact of IFRS adoption and the influence of changes in economic conditions on conditional conservatism. Specifically, we study the level of accounting conservatism before and after IFRS adoption detailing for the pre and crisis period and post-crisis period surrounding the 2007/2008 financial crisis. Our findings are consistent with a conservative accounting practice in Europe as a whole and in each country individually. Besides, opposite to that expected, the results provide evidence of more conservative accounting practice in Anglo-Saxon countries, but we find no significant differences in conservatism in Nordic countries. Another finding is a significant decrease in the level of conservatism after IFRS adoption. Regarding the joint impact of IFRS adoption and economic conditions, we find a decrease in conservatism in the pre and crisis period, followed by a substantial increase in the post-crisis period. Our results seem to be in line with the positive accounting theory when suggesting that conservatism plays a fundamental role as corporate governance and efficient contracting mechanism between managers and other stakeholders of the firm. Furthermore, the results suggest that the flexibility provided by IFRS allows adjusting the level of conservatism when economic conditions change.
- Accounting accruals and information asymmetry in EuropePublication . Cerqueira, António; Pereira, CláudiaWe investigate whether the positive relation between accounting accruals and information asymmetry documented for U.S. stock markets also holds for European markets, considered as a whole and at the country level. This research is relevant because this relation is likely to be affected by differences in accounting standards used by companies for financial reporting, in the traditional use of the banking system or capital markets for firm financing, in legal systems and cultural environment. We find that in European stock markets discretionary accruals are positively related with the Corwin and Schultz high-low spread estimator used as a proxy for information asymmetry. Our results suggest that the earnings management component of accruals outweighs the informational component, but the significance of the relation varies across countries. Further, such association tends to be stronger for firms with the highest levels of positive discretionary accruals. Consistent with the evidence provided by the authors, our results also suggest that the high-low spread estimator is more efficient than the closing bid-ask spread when analysing the impact of information quality on information asymmetry.
- Assessing Earnings Management in European Publicly Traded FirmsPublication . Cerqueira, António; Pereira, CláudiaWe investigate if investors may benefit from using the accruals quality measure to assess the level of earnings management exercised by firms when preparing their accounting statements. More earnings management is expected to be associated with high information asymmetry among stock market participants because it makes earnings information less precise, thus providing an information advantage to informed investors relative to liquidity traders. Our results based on a sample of European publicly traded firms are consistent with a positive association between earnings management and information asymmetry. However, given some previous studies suggesting that accruals based measures may be noisy indicators of earnings management we further develop and test a method to enhance the performance of accruals quality in detecting earnings management