We demonstrate the value-relevance of foreign earnings for US multinational firms by examining the associations between annual abnormal stock performance and changes in firms′ domestic and foreign incomes. For 2570 tirm-year observations between 1985 and 1993, both foreign and domestic earnings changes have significant positive associations with annual excess return measures: however, the association coefficient on foreign income is significantly larger than the association coefficient on domestic income. We demonstrate this larger association coefficient for foreign income is consistent with differences in growth opportunities between domestic and foreign operations.

[Previous research has demonstrated that information asymmetry translates into higher transaction costs for trading shares of the firm which, in turn, raise the required rate of return and lower current stock price. The information asymmetry perspective suggests that, ceteris paribus, managers wishing to maximize the value of their firms have incentives to reduce the degree of information asymmetry by switching to newly available accounting techniques which make financial statements more informative to investors. Firms with greater information asymmetry are predicted to be more likely to switch to more informative accounting methods when they become available. Tests on the choice of functional currency among U.S. multinational firms support these predictions after controlling for variables such as the debt-equity ratio, interest coverage, size, and the relative size of the foreign currency adjustment in the financial statement.]

Consistent with previous research, the authors fail to find a significant correlation between the abnormal returns of their sample firms with international activities and changes in the dollar. They investigate the possibility that this failure is due to mispricing. Lagged changes in the dollar are a significant variable in explaining current abnormal returns of the authors' sample firms, suggesting that misprizing does occur. A simple trading strategy based upon these results generates significant abnormal returns. Corroborating evidence from returns around earnings announcements as well as errors in analysts' forecasts of earnings is also provided.

Abstract Studies the information asymmetry perspective of corporate accounting choice. Effects of information asymmetry to transaction costs and liquidity for trading shares; Disclosure opportunity to decrease information asymmetry; Information asymmetry in the choice of functional currency by multinational firms.

ABSTRACT Consistent with previous research, we fail to find a significant correlation between the abnormal returns of our sample firms with international activities and changes in the dollar. We investigate the possibility that this failure is due to mispricing. Lagged changes in the dollar are a significant variable in explaining current abnormal returns of our sample firms, suggesting that mispricing does occur. A simple trading strategy based upon these results generates significant abnormal returns. Corroborating evidence from returns around earnings announcements as well as errors in analysts' forecasts of earnings is also provided.

Consistent with previous research, we fail to find a significant correlation between the abnormal returns of our sample firms with international activities and changes in the dollar. We investigate the possibility that this failure is due to mispricing. Lagged changes in the dollar are a significant variable in explaining current abnormal returns of our sample firms, suggesting that mispricing does occur. A simple trading strategy based upon these results generates significant abnormal returns. Corroborating evidence from returns around earnings announcements as well as errors in analysts' forecasts of earnings is also provided.

We examine the relation between exchange rate variability and stock return volatility for U.S. multinational firms and decompose this relation into components of systematic and diversifiable risk. Focusing on two five-year periods around the 1973 switch from fixed to floating exchange rates, we find a significant increase in volatility of monthly stock returns corresponding to the period of increased exchange rate variability, even relative to the increase in stock return volatility for three control samples. In conjunction with this increase in total volatility there is also an increase in market risk (beta) for multinational firms.

ABSTRACT Firms differ in the extent to which they “pass through” changes in exchange rates into foreign currency prices and in their “exposure” to exchange rates—the responsiveness of their profits to changes in exchange rates. Because pricing affects profitability, a firm's pass‐through and exposure should be related. This paper develops models of exporting firms under imperfect competition to study these related phenomena. From these models we derive the optimal pass‐through decisions and the resulting exchange rate exposure. The models are estimated on eight Japanese export industries using both the price data pass‐through and financial data for exposure.