Economic intuition indicates that each dollar of current pretax cash flow should lead to higher accounting earnings, higher tax payments, and lower stock price under the FIFO rather than the LIFO method of inventory costing. Hence, the earnings/price ratios of the FIFO firms should be higher than those of the LIFO firms. However, the empirical study in this paper provides evidence to the contrary. To search for confounding factors, I examine the possible impacts of size, risk, industry classification, other accounting methods, and expectations of future earnings growth. None of these factors seems to affect the conclusion significantly. Because I have not established a complete causal link between accounting information and stock valuation, I refrain from drawing strong inferences and treat it as a puzzle. This puzzle should stimulate more research in this area in the future. Résumé. L'intuition économique veut que chaque dollar de flux d'encaisse actualisé avant impôt doive produire des bénéfices comptables supérieurs, des impôts à payer plus élevés, et des prix plus faibles des actions si l'on utilise la méthode d'épuisement successif (PEPS) plutôt que la méthode d'épuisement à rebours (DEPS) dans l'establissement du coût des stocks. Les ratios cours/bénéfices des entreprises qui utilisent la méthode PEPS devraient done être plus élevés que ceux des entreprises qui utilisent la méthode DEPS. Toutefois, l'étude empirique effectuée par l'auteur l'amène à des conclusions contraires. Cherchant des facteurs qui tendraient à renverser la situation, il examine l'incidence possible de la taille, du risque, de la classification du secteur, d'autres méthodes comptables et de perspectives de croissance éventuelle des bénéfices. Aucun de ces facteurs ne semble influer sur sa conclusion de façon significative. L'auteur n'ayant pas établi de lien de causalité définitif entre l'information comptable et l'évaluation des actions, il s'abstient de tirer des conclusions fermes et aborde plutôt la question sous forme de puzzle. Un puzzle qui devrait éventuellement stimuler la recherche dans ce domaine.

This paper examines the determinants and economic efficiency of corporate voluntary disclosure. The focus is on the trade-off for an individual firm when the costs and benefits of voluntary disclosure stem from the consequences of its investment decisions and the impact on its share price. Investment and voluntary disclosure decisions are intertwined. First, voluntary disclosure leads to more accurate pricing, which induces more efficient investment decisions. Second, the firm may affect the market pricing in its favor by strategically disclosing or withholding its private information. This opportunistic use of disclosure may cause the real investment to be distorted at the margin. My analysis shows that the efficiency of voluntary disclosure is influenced by both effects. Further, this paper investigates how the investment efficiency and the propensity for providing voluntary disclosure respond to various environmental variables. Two such key variables are the general economic outlook of the investment opportunity and the quality of firm private information.

This study examines whether and how brokers manage the distribution of their stock recommendations. We document that if a broker's percentage of buy recommendations in a quarter is substantially higher than its target level, the broker issues significantly fewer buy recommendations than other brokers in the following quarter. This evidence remains robust after controlling for mean reversion in the data and varies systematically with brokers' expected benefits and costs of managing the distribution. Exploring possible methods to manage the distribution, we find evidence suggesting that brokers alter the timing of recommendation initiations and reiterations, and shift recommendations between adjacent quarters. Finally, we show that distribution management affects the informativeness of stock recommendations in the market.

We examine information quality and financial leverage when an entrepreneur needs financing to undertake a risky project and his effort input affects the project's outcome. We show that information quality and financial leverage interact to play active roles in both investment and effort decisions. Our analysis shows a positive association between leverage and optimal information quality—when leverage is low (high), low (high) information quality is optimal. This is because with low leverage, the entrepreneur is already motivated by his large share of the outcome to exert effort, and high information quality is not efficient as a precise bad signal discourages the entrepreneur's effort. In contrast, when leverage is high and thus the entrepreneur is less motivated by his residual cash flows, high information quality is optimal, because a precise good signal encourages the entrepreneur's effort. Our study highlights the joint effect of information quality and financial leverage on overall efficiency through firms' effort inputs as well as on defining investment efficiency.

This study investigates the time‐series trend and determinants of matching between revenues and expenses in a sample of 42 countries. We find that the decline in matching documented by Dichev and Tang ( ) is not unique to the United States, but is a worldwide phenomenon. Our results show that matching is weaker in countries with (i) wider use of accrual accounting; (ii) a larger proportion of firms reporting significant special items; (iii) slower economic growth; (iv) more research and development activities; (v) larger service sectors; and (vi) stronger investor protection. We find no evidence that mandatory adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards affects matching. Changes in accounting and economic factors collectively explain the downward trend in matching. Overall, the results suggest that both accounting and economic factors are important determinants of matching over time and across countries.

A major function of financial statement analysis is to assess the risk of financial distress. Since Beaver's (1966) and Altaian's (1968) pioneering works, voluminous studies have been devoted to exploring the use of accounting information in predicting business failure. We apply survival analysis to study a class of financial distress when a financial analyst can identify an event that sets off the dynamic process of business adversity and would like to find out how long a firm can endure the adversity. We use the case of the oil and gas industry during the turmoil of the early 1980s and apply survival analysis to study how long a firm can endure this drastic oil price decline before facing financial distress. Our results indicate that the liquidity ratio, leverage ratio, operating cash flows, success in exploration, age, and size are significant factors affecting corporate endurance. Résumé. Une fonction majeure de l'analyse des états financiers consiste à évaluer le risque de difficultés financières. Depuis les travaux d'amorce de Beaver et Altman, de volumineuses études ont été consacrées à l'analyse approfondie de l'utilisation de l'information comptable dans la prédiction des faillites d'entreprises. Les auteurs appliquent l'analyse de survie à l'étude d'une catégorie de difficultés financières pour laquelle l'analyste financier parvient à déterminer un événement qui déclenche le processus dynamique des difficultés de l'entreprise et aimerait déterminer pendant combien de temps cette dernière pourra résister à ces difficultés. Les auteurs évoquent le cas du secteur pétrolier et gazier au cours de la période tumultueuse du début des années 80 et appliquent l'analyse de survie à l'étude du temps pendant lequel une entreprise pouvait résister à un déclin radical du prix du pétrole avant d'éprouver des difficultés financières. Les résultats de l'étude démontrent que le ratio de liquidité, le ratio de levier, les flux monétaires provenant de l'exploitation, le succès des activités d'exploration, l'âge et la taille de l'entreprise sont des facteurs importants qui influent sur sa résistance.

We empirically examine whether adopting a uniform set of accounting standards mitigates information frictions in financial markets and facilitates market integration. Using a difference‐in‐difference design, we find that after the mandatory adoption of IFRS local stock returns incorporate more global information and at a faster speed. The effect of IFRS adoption is stronger in countries where there are larger improvements in accounting comparability and for firms with a larger increase in foreign ownership. Overall, our results suggest that accounting standards harmonization facilitates financial market integration.

In this study, we show that when a firm needs external financing, information quality has real effects via financing contracts on the firm's input to influence its operational outcome. Interestingly, we find that higher information quality decreases overall efficiency. Our analysis highlights the importance of considering the role of information quality in the presence of the firm's input decision upon financing contracts. In particular, information quality has a feedforward effect on the firm's real input decision via financing contracts, which in turn has a feedback effect on financing contracts and overall efficiency.