We examine the relation between mark-to-market (MTM) accounting for securities and information asymmetry among bank investors. Relative to historical cost, MTM incorporates more timely information in financial statements. The primary effect of more timely disclosure most likely is to reduce...

Several prior studies have shown that cash flows have significantly greater impact on stock prices than accruals. We examine the implications of these findings for the post-earnings-announcement-drift anomaly. We argue that, if investors under-react to earnings news, then the larger price impact...

In this paper, I review the role that financial accounting plays in contracts aimed at mitigating agency problems between shareholders and managers and between shareholders and debtholders. The paper discusses the reasons why and how financial accounting numbers are used in debt and stewardship...

Do accruals-based accounting earnings provide better information to investors about future operating cash flows than operating cash flows themselves, as predicted by FASB's conceptual framework? The most recent evidence (Nallareddy et al., 2020) is that operating cash flows, measured correctly...

A substantial literature investigates conditional conservatism, defined as asymmetric accounting recognition of economic shocks (ldquo;newsrdquo;), and how it depends on various market, political and institutional variables. Studies typically assume the Basu (1997) asymmetric timeliness...

Bonus issues, share splits and rights issues are studied in a replication and extension of the classic Fama, Fisher, Jensen and Roll study. On the Melbourne exchange, each category on average is associated with positive abnormal returns. However, the market does not appear to value bonuses or...

The two-moment, mean-variance model of asset pricing is tested against data from the Melbourne stock exchange. The model appears to describe the data quite well, though there are problems in experimental design which are yet to be cleared up. Neither variance nor skewness appears to explain...

In the spirit of Fisher and Lorie (1968), the authors constructed a data base comprising monthly rates of return on 1029 separately-listed Sydney mining equities over the period January 1958 to February 1979. The data base should stimulate further research. The first use of the data is a study...

Australian capital markets, being relatively “thinâ€, present the researcher with a potentially large “errors in the variables†problem. The standard formulation of the problem is inappropriate for estimating securities' systematic risks. The unusual feature in this context is...