Hypotheses 高速公路软基处理方案探讨-强夯法
The above discussion leads to the main hypothesis to be tested:
H1: The level of accounting policy disclosures is negatively associated with the dispersion and error in analysts' earnings forecasts.
Accounting policy disclosures may serve as a proxy for other information in the annual report. This is a potential problem, especially as the relation between earnings forecasts and policy disclosures, if any, may result from information contained elsewhere in the annual report (i.e., in the basic financial statements, other notes or general information). Therefore, I also test whether accounting policy disclosures are incrementally informative beyond other annual report information.
Since managers have some discretion over accounting policy disclosures, I also test whether potential endogeneity of reporting choice affects my results. For this purpose, I include several variables to explain variation in disclosure in a system of equations that captures both the effects and determinants of disclosure variations.
I also examine whether the usefulness of these disclosures varies with the degree of flexibility managers have in choosing among accounting methods. This flexibility depends on home country accounting standards. The financial reporting environment varies considerably across countries (e.g., Ball, Kothari and Robin 2000; Basu, Hwang and Jan 1998). For instance, U.S. GAAP is generally more rigid than other countries' GAAP with respect to the number of choices allowed among accounting methods (e.g., Basu et al. 1998; Nobes and Parker 1998). I investigate whether the role of accounting policy disclosures in explaining forecast dispersion and error depends on the number of allowable accounting methods. In the extreme, if firms have no choice about which accounting methods to employ, annual report disclosure about the "chosen" policy should 金蛇狂舞听后感
be of little value. If, on the other hand, a number of methods are acceptable, users of financial statements will, at a minimum, have to spend less time and effort on scrutinizing the financials if sufficient disclosures are provided. From this contrast follows the second hypothesis:
H2: The level of accounting policy disclosures is more negatively associated with forecast dispersion and error in environments that have a large set of allowable accounting methods compared with settings that have fewer allowable accounting methods.本文来自辣.文~论^文·网原文请找腾讯32491.14
H2 draws on cross-country heterogeneity of financial reporting practices. O'Brien (1998) raises the question of whether analysts' abilities to forecast earnings are "important" outside the United States. Her argument is that financial statements in some countries have historically been prepared to satisfy legal (including tax) requirements, rather than to inform investors. Although countries have different traditions, different degrees of capital market development, and so on, this does not necessarily imply that analysts’
earnings forecasts lack importance in a country such as Germany, where financing comes mostly from sources other than equity investors. Consistent with the perceived need for the information provided by earnings forecasts, Germany has a relatively large number of analysts following each firm.
Furthermore, Capstaff, Paudyal and Rees (2000) show that forecast revisions of German analysts are associated with subsequent abnormal stock returns; the same is true of French and U.K. forecast revisions.5 Hence, there are reasons to believe that these forecasts are important for investors in settings outside the United States.
3. DATA AND CONTROL VARIABLES
In this section, I describe the disclosure measures, analyst forecast data, the measure of extent of flexibility in choosing among accounting methods, and control variables. Then I discuss sample selection and descriptive statistics. Table 1 summarizes variable definitions and data sources.
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